all the love I never gave (before I left you)
by holtzbabe
Summary: An AU where there are not two names on the cover of Ghosts From Our Past, but three, and there is a lifetime of history before the words 'come here often' are ever uttered. In other words: strangers to best friends, best friends to lovers, lovers to strangers.
1. i

i.

Erin Gilbert is pretty much sick of other kids. She's had enough—enough of the way they treat her, enough of their mean comments, enough of being shoved into lockers and splattered with white paint and tripped in the hallway and on the playground. She's had enough of their cold laughter, their cold looks, their cold hearts. She's had enough.

She tells her mom and dad this, and they tell Dr. Lisa, and Dr. Lisa sits across from Erin in the brown room and asks _why?_ Always _why?_

Erin always gives the same answer. She kicks her heels against the scratchy fabric at the base of the couch and says, "I don't know."

(She does know, of course, but she never says).

The ghost stops coming every night, but nothing else stops. Erin still stays awake most of the night in terror. The kids still bully her, call her Ghost Girl, call her crazy.

Summer is a relief. Summer is an eternity away from school. She spends her days at the public library, where she never sees another kid from her grade. She barely sees any kids at all, any age, and the ones she does see only come to pick out books and leave again. None of them stay like she does, tucked into a quiet corner on the other side of the 500s. Far away from the children's section with its beanbag chairs and primary-coloured foam floor.

Nobody bothers her there.

Until one day, mid summer, when it's too warm to be outside and too warm to be inside, at least in her house. The library has industrial air conditioners, so it's nice and cool.

She's reading a thick book on algebra and trying to see how many of the equations she can get right when a girl rounds the corner and comes down into her aisle. She's small, really small, with golden hair too dirty and messy to be like a princess's. She's wearing purple overalls with dirt and paint all over them, and a fuzzy orange sweater that she must be very warm in. She's wearing black and yellow gumboots even though they haven't had rain in ages. She's got a peace sign button pinned to the strap of her overalls, and a patchwork bag slung over her shoulder that hangs so low that it scrapes the carpet. She's got glasses, but the glass is yellow and they're so big that they're barely hanging on her nose.

The girl smiles when she sees Erin, big and wide so Erin can see the missing teeth on the bottom.

"Hiya!"

Erin shrinks back from the girl's enthusiasm. She doesn't trust other kids, not one bit. She knows how to deal with them, though.

"Whaddya want?" she says in her toughest voice.

The girl keeps smiling. "I'm looking for a book on how to build a tape recorder."

Why would she want to do that?

"That's Technology and Applied Science, the 600s. This is the 500s."

"What's that?" The girl looks at the shelf beside her.

"Natural Science."

"You sure know your stuff. Are you going to be a librarian when you grow up?"

Erin shakes her head. "I'm going to be a scientist."

"Cool! Me too. Maybe. I dunno. I like building things. Whatcha reading?"

Erin looks down at her book. "It's math. You wouldn't understand it."

"Oh." The girls drops her bag on the floor, like maybe she's planning on staying a while. "How old are you?"

"Nine," Erin says proudly. She just had her birthday. She didn't have a birthday party because she knew nobody would come to it, but her parents made her a cake. Vanilla, her favourite, with rainbow sprinkles.

"I'm turning eight in September," the girl says, equally as proud.

Eight? She's so small, though. Maybe she's lying.

"Well," Erin says, "I need to get back to my math."

The girl picks up her bag again. "Right. And I need to go find my book."

She stands there for a few more seconds. Erin buries her nose in her book and prays that the girl leaves her alone.

"I'm Jillian," the girl says. "What's your name?"

"Stacy," Erin says. She doesn't know why. She's always liked the thought of being a Stacy. She bets Stacy wouldn't have a ghost haunt her. Stacy would be popular and have friends.

The girl, Jillian, smiles again. "Nice to meet you, Stacy. See ya around?"

"Sure," Erin mutters.

Jillian gives a weird little salute and marches out of the aisle, leaving Erin to return to her calculations in peace and forget all about her.

September approaches, and Erin tells her parents that she doesn't want to go back to school. They tell Dr. Lisa, and Dr. Lisa asks _why?_ like she always does, and Erin says she doesn't know.

Her dad says, "Suck it up," and so Erin has to go back to school, where all she can do is hope that all the other kids forgot about her over the summer.

Her class list says she has some of the worst kids in her fourth-grade class, like Greg Christopher and Chris Turner, who she likes to smoosh together into one super-mean boy named Chris Christopher. She doesn't bother reading the rest of the list. It's not like she has any friends to look for.

Basically, she's looking forward to going back to school as much as she's looking forward to her next dentist appointment.

* * *

Jillian Holtzmann has never cared a whole lot about other kids. She's made the odd friend here and there in her nearly-eight years of life, but she doesn't care much when they get scared of her or call her weird. She likes being alone. She's never met anyone who's as smart as she is, so she gets bored talking to other kids her age.

She gets bored in school too, like _really_ bored. Her second-grade teacher notices how bored she always gets in class, how it takes her like five minutes to do all her work, and tells her mom and Principal Vickers, and they decide that she should skip right ahead to the fourth grade this year. She sits in his office with her feet swinging while he says to her mom that normally there's concern about letting a student skip a grade because it might be hard on them to lose their friends, but Jillian doesn't have any friends so she'll be okay. She agrees with him.

She's put into Mrs. Albertson's class, and she reads through all the names on her class list and memorizes them, which is easy peasy because she only has to look at something once to remember it forever (Dr. Hirata once told her that it's called a 'photographic memory,' and now every time she does it she makes a little camera click in her brain, just for fun). She doesn't know any of the names, but that's not surprising. They're all a whole year older than her.

On the first day of school, her mom drives her in their red '82 Chevy C10 (Jillian loves that truck a lot, and can tell you about everything from the engine to the grills to the little hula dancer duct-taped to the dashboard, who she's named Marge).

Jillian grabs her bag from down by her feet.

"Have a good first day, baby," her mom says, stretching across the seat to kiss her cheek. "Raise the perfect amount of hell, okay?"

"Just enough to keep things interesting," Jillian confirms with a bob of her head. Just like her mom always told her.

Her mom smiles fondly and ruffles her already-messy hair. "Go get 'em."

Jillian opens the door of the truck and clambers out with her bag, then slams it shut behind her. You gotta give it a good shove, or it won't close properly. She gives her mom a salute and watches her drive off to her job at the Kellogg's factory. She operates the machine that fills the bags with cereal. It's really cool—one time Jillian got to go and learn about how it worked. Plus, she got free cereal. Win-win.

She finds Mrs. Albertson's classroom easily and walks in to find it buzzing with activity as all the kids catch up with each other after a summer apart.

"Welcome, Jillian!" Mrs. Albertson says. They met last week to talk about her 'transition' into the fourth grade.

She points Jillian in the direction of her assigned desk. All the desks are arranged in little clusters of four. There's a girl sitting at her cluster already. Jillian comes up behind her and sees the small paper nameplate that shows she's in the desk beside the girl. She pulls out her chair and drops her bag on the floor.

"Hi! I'm Jill—" She breaks off as the girl beside her turns her head and she sees her face for the first time. "Oh! Stacy?"

There was no Stacy on her class list. Did she just get transferred in? This is exciting—she didn't expect to know anyone. Not that she really knows Stacy, but at least she's met her.

"Uh…I…" Stacy splutters.

Then Jillian notices the nameplate on her desk. _Erin._

Erin Gilbert, Jillian recalls from the list. She scrunches her face in confusion. "Wait…I thought you were someone else. Sorry. Do you have a twin named Stacy?" she asks hopefully.

Stacy—no, _Erin_ …whoever she is, her face turns very red. "No. I, um…my name's not Stacy. It's Erin."

"Well, I got that," Jillian says. "I'm sorry."

"No, I mean, I lied. I told you I was Stacy. That was me."

"Oh." That makes Jillian even more confused. "Why?"

"I thought Stacy was cool," Erin says, her face now the colour of the tomato plants on Jillian's balcony.

"Oh," Jillian says again. "That's okay. Erin seems cool, too."

Erin bites her lip. "What are you doing here? I thought you were eight?"

"Still seven for another week, technically. I get to skip the third grade," she says proudly.

"Wow," Erin says. "You must be really smart."

Jillian shrugs her shoulders to her ears. "I am."

Dr. Hirata made her do a lot of tests to find out how smart she is, where she did everything from solve long lists of equations to copy patterns using cubes. He wouldn't tell her what her score was, but he told her mom, and her mom cried and bought her a brand new set of tools which were so shiny that Jillian was scared to use them. She might have thought that this was a sign that she did badly and she felt bad for her, but she overheard her mom on the phone later say the word 'genius,' so Jillian supposes she couldn't have done that badly.

A boy comes and sits across from them and sneers at Erin. "Great. I have to look at Ghost Girl all day?" He turns to examine Jillian. "Who are you?"

She smiles. "Jillian Holtzmann."

"What's with the glasses, Jillian? You trying to look cool? You just look like a bug. A creepy, scaly bug with big bug-eyes. Reptilian Jillian, that's what you should be called."

She tilts her head. "Bugs aren't reptiles."

"Whatever, weirdo nerd. Are you even in the right classroom? What are you, five?"

Jillian's had enough of this. "At least I'm smarter than a five-year-old, unlike you."

"Shut up, Reptilian Jillian. Where'd you find this kid, Ghost Girl? Did you have to steal someone out of kindergarten to be your friend because nobody else would? Did she see a ghost, too? A ghost bug?"

Jillian leans forward on her desk and rests her chin on her fists. "Ghost bugs sound cool. There'd be so many of them, considering how quickly bugs die." She looks at Erin. "Did you really see a ghost?"

Erin doesn't answer her, but crosses her arms. "Leave us alone, Chris."

Soon, another boy joins their cluster of desks and the school day officially begins, and the entire incident is temporarily pushed from Jillian's mind.

* * *

Recess can't come fast enough. It's only been a few hours, and Erin is already sick of this year. Not only is it obvious that nobody's forgotten about the Ghost Girl thing, but Mrs. Albertson just _had_ to put half of Chris Christopher in her desk group.

As soon as they're dismissed for recess, she grabs the muffin her mom packed her and beelines across the field towards her Spot, tucked in the corner where the fences meet and there's enough overhanging trees that she's _almost_ invisible.

"Erin!"

She looks over her shoulder to see Jillian running towards her in a lopsided way with her arms waving everywhere, causing heads to turn after her. Why won't she leave Erin alone? Doesn't she realize yet that Erin doesn't want to be friends? Not with her, and not with anyone.

She keeps walking, but Jillian catches up with her anyway. She's panting like a dog. "Boy, you walk fast."

"What do you want?"

"Can I play with you?"

"I don't _play_ at recess," Erin says. "I sit quietly and read and eat my snack."

"Okay, can I do _that_ with you?"

"Don't you have friends your own age?" Erin says meanly.

"Nope," Jillian says cheerfully.

Erin doesn't care enough to fight, so she doesn't say anything else, hoping Jillian will take the hint that she's not welcome and leave.

She doesn't.

Erin sits down in her Spot, peels the plastic wrap off her muffin, and cracks open her book. Jillian grabs the chain-link fence, lacing her fingers through the holes, and stares into the small forest on the other side.

"Wonder what's in there?"

"Trees," Erin says, finding her place in her book easily and picking up where she left off.

"Bears, probably."

"There's no bears in there." Erin flips the page.

Jillian releases the fence and plunks herself down in the grass next to Erin. "Why are you so mean?"

Erin doesn't say anything. Flips another page.

"I'm just trying to be nice," Jillian continues. "Seems like I'm one of the only people who is. So why are you being mean to me?"

Erin slams her book shut. "Listen. I know you're only trying to get in on the joke so you can fit in with everyone else. I'm not going to tell you, okay? Go figure it out from someone else."

Jillian frowns. "What joke? If you mean the 'Ghost Girl' thing, I don't care. I get picked on, too. I just thought you might want a friend."

"I don't need friends."

"Neither do I. But you don't need enemies either, and it seems like you've got a lot of those already." Jillian rips out a handful of grass and throws it.

Maybe she's telling the truth.

"You can stay," Erin says finally.

"Cool," Jillian says. "Whatcha reading today? More math?"

"It's Jane Austen."

"Never heard of her."

"Most kids haven't," Erin says, feeling pleased with herself that she has.

"Is it good?"

"It's okay."

Truthfully, she doesn't understand a lot of what's happening in the book and finds it a little boring, but she likes learning new words and that's why she's reading it. It's one of the books that her grandmother got her for her last birthday.

"I don't like reading much. Unless it's telling me how to do something."

"Like build a tape recorder?"

Jillian gives her another toothy grin. "Exactly. I don't even read those kinda books that much. I like figuring stuff out myself. I only look for directions when I'm really stuck."

"So you were really stuck on the tape recorder?"

Jillian sighs sadly. "Yeah. It only plays songs backwards. No matter what I do, I can't get it to work properly." She perks up. "On the bright side, I get to listen to songs backwards, which not many people get to do."

Erin stares at her for a few moments. "You're weird."

"I know," Jillian says proudly. "Aren't you?"

"No," Erin says defensively.

"Don't worry," Jillian says. "It's not a bad thing."

"Pretty sure it is," Erin mutters.

They're quiet for a minute.

"Hey, why _do_ they call you Ghost Girl?"

Erin freezes up.

"Don't worry. I told you—I don't care and I won't call you it. I just wanna know. Did you really see a ghost, or is that just pretend?"

What's Erin got to lose in telling her? The companionship of this little kid who she doesn't want around anyway?

"Yeah, I did," she says quietly.

"Whaaaat?! Cool!"

Cool? That wasn't the answer Erin was expecting. "It wasn't cool. It was scary."

"Didya know who it was?"

Erin nods. "My next door neighbour. She hated me and was super mean, and then when she died she came into my room and screamed and barfed all over me."

"Wicked. Real barf or ghost barf?"

"It looked like blood," Erin says. "But when she disappeared, it went away too."

"That's so awesome," Jillian says. "How many times have you seen her?"

"She came every night for a year," Erin admits, her heart beating faster at the memory.

"Sweeeeet! I mean, scary, definitely, but that's so cool. How many people get to see a ghost, let alone see one for a whole year?"

She's almost talking like she's jealous. "Well, I'd gladly give her to you," Erin says. "It was awful."

Jillian thinks for a few seconds. "So do the other kids not believe you?"

Erin shakes her head. "They think I'm crazy. So do my parents."

"What? Why? Do they not believe in ghosts?"

"Nobody does. Only crazy people."

Jillian shrugs. "I believe in ghosts. And aliens!"

"Well, people will say you're crazy, too."

"That's alright. I don't mind. I don't care what people say about me." She puffs her chest out. "My mom taught me that. She says the most important thing is being proud of who you are."

Erin doesn't think she'll ever be able to do that, but she nods like she agrees. "So you really believe me that I saw a ghost?"

"Of course! Why would you lie about that?"

(For attention, according to Dr. Lisa).

Erin smiles a bit. Jillian is the first person to believe her, or at least _say_ she believes her. She still doesn't fully trust her to not go running off and join the others…but how much trouble could this tiny blonde girl cause, anyway?

From that moment on, the two of them are friends.

* * *

To Jillian's jubilance, Erin is smart, too. Really smart. She wasn't kidding when she said she was doing math that Jillian wouldn't understand. Jillian's good at math, but Erin's _really_ good at math and she loves it. Jillian doesn't particularly like math, even though it's easy for her brain to do.

They both finish their work in class very fast, but Mrs. Albertson is good at giving them extra things to do. On the other side of their desk cluster, Chris Turner goes super red every time it happens, like he's a volcano that's going to erupt. He doesn't like that they're smarter than him.

He spreads the nickname he made up, and soon the whole class calls her Reptilian Jillian. She doesn't mind. One day, she draws a little comic about Reptilian Jillian and Ghost Girl, because she thinks they sound like superheroes. In the comic, they defeat a gigantic monster named Chris Christopher who's stomping his way through a big city. Ghost Girl's powers are flying and telekinesis, and Reptilian Jillian can climb up buildings and shoot lasers from her mouth. They're the perfect team.

Erin loves it so much that Jillian copies out the comic so they can both have it. Jillian folds her copy up and hides it under her pillow.

She hasn't told her mom about Erin, and she doesn't quite know why. She kinda likes being weird and friendless. She's Jillian Holtzmann who doesn't need friends, and that's the way it's always been.

Not that she doesn't like being Erin's friend. It's just that her friendship with Erin is kind of special, and she likes that nobody knows about it. Even the kids at school don't take them seriously.

So, they only ever spend time together at school and never go to each others' houses for playdates. Not that they play, ever. They usually talk about ghosts or science or ghost science. They talk about how they can't wait to get out of elementary school so they can learn about even more things. Even with Mrs. Albertson giving them as much extra work as she can, they're both still bored in class.

Now, though, Jillian doesn't mind. At least they're bored together.

Fourth grade is a lot better than Erin thought it would be. To her surprise, Jillian is becoming her best friend. They spend every recess and lunch together, talking about science and math. She knew Jillian had to be smart in order to skip the third grade, but she didn't know Jillian was _this_ smart. She knows a lot of things that Erin doesn't know, and she remembers _everything_. She'll be able to perfectly remember something Erin said to her months ago.

She doesn't tell her mom and dad or Dr. Lisa about Jillian, because she doesn't want them to think that the only person willing to be her friend is a girl who doesn't have any other friends. She also knows that her mom and dad would want to meet Jillian, and she's a little embarrassed by her. She's so _weird_ , and she dresses like a ragamuffin, as her mom would say, and the worst part is that she believes in ghosts. Her mom and dad and Dr. Lisa would probably say that she was a bad friend to have. They wouldn't like her.

So Erin keeps Jillian to herself.

As summer approaches, she starts to wonder what's going to happen when they're not in school. Will she not see Jillian again until September? What if they don't get put in the same class next year? Jillian's presence has been the only thing that got her through all the mean things kids have said to her this year. She makes it seem like being Ghost Girl is a good thing.

Jillian is the one who asks, finally.

"You think we'll see each other during summer?"

They're in their Spot. Jillian is practicing cartwheels across the grass while Erin watches. She does a running start and plants her hands, and her feet barely get off the ground.

"I dunno," Erin says.

"Do you wanna?" Jillian goes again, and this attempt is more like a somersault than a cartwheel.

"Yeah," Erin says.

"Cool. Me too."

They both know that they aren't going to invite each other to their houses. Erin taps her fingers on her knees. "Maybe we can meet up at the library?"

That's where she spends her summers anyway, so it won't be suspicious.

Jillian lands her next cartwheel face first, then rolls so she's sitting. "Yeah!"

On their last day of school, Erin is cleaning out her desk when Jillian sets something on it. Erin hesitantly picks it up. It's a button with a little lizard on it. She looks up in confusion.

Jillian holds up a button with a small ghost on it. "So we can remember each other over the summer if we don't see each other much."

Erin smiles and attaches the pin to her bookbag. Jillian puts her ghost one on her patchwork bag, where she has a growing collection of buttons, including the peace sign one that she was wearing on her overalls the first time they met.

"Thanks, RJ," Erin says.

Jillian flashes a full grin. "You're welcome, GG."

When Erin's mom and dad ask her where she got the pin, she lies and says she won it in trivia game at school.

Over the summer, she goes to the public library every single day in the hopes that she'll see Jillian. It takes days and days before she finally shows up, dragging her patchwork bag behind her.

Erin sits up straighter immediately. "Where have you been?"

Jillian shrugs. "Sorry."

She never answers the question. For the rest of the summer, her appearances are scattered and unpredictable. Erin still goes every day. She doesn't want to miss her.

Despite being surrounded by knowledge, they don't talk about school stuff much. Instead, they learn everything about each other. They discover that both Jillian's mom and Erin's dad work at the Kellogg's factory, but in different sections.

"What about your dad?" Erin asks.

"I don't have a dad," Jillian says.

"Everyone has a dad."

"That's not true," Jillian says. "I don't."

"In order to make a baby—"

"I don't have a dad," Jillian says firmly. "It's just me and my mom. Always has been, and always will be. It's the two of us forever."

"Okay," Erin says.

* * *

Two things happen in Jillian's ninth year of life. The first thing is that her and Erin aren't put into the same fifth grade class. The second thing is that her mom falls in love.

The man's name is Mark, and he's very nice. He brings her mom flowers and Jillian brand-new electronics to take apart. That's how Jillian knows he has a lot of money—he'll bring her a Walkman still in its box and tell her to go to town on it.

She's never had much brand-new. It's all second-hand. Most of the things she owns are things she built or fixed from parts she found in a dumpster. She likes it that way. It's never bothered her that she doesn't have new stuff. She knows her mom works very hard at the factory to feed them, and she would never ask for more.

But Mark, Mark has a lot of money. And he buys Jillian a lot of things, probably to get her to like him.

He doesn't have to work very hard. He's very nice, and he makes her mom smile at nothing and sing in the shower.

She tells Erin about Mark. Even though they're not in the same fifth grade class, they still spend every single recess and lunch together.

"Maybe you'll have a dad after all," Erin says.

Jillian doesn't stop thinking about that for a long time.

In April, Mark takes her out for dinner, just the two of them.

"Jillian, I want to ask your mom to marry me. Is that okay with you?"

Jillian looks up from her crayon doodle of a rocket-powered skateboard. It might be babyish, but she draws all her best ideas in crayon.

"Marry you?" she repeats.

"Yes. I would be your stepdad."

Mark would be part of her family. She likes him, she really does, but she freezes up at that. "But…but it's just me and my mom. It's the two of us forever." That's what her mom always told her. She says it was the first thing she ever said to Jillian, while she was holding her in her arms in the hospital. _Just the two of us forever, baby._

"Jillian, I love your mom a lot. I love you, too. I don't want to infringe on the special bond you have. That's the last thing I want."

Jillian licks her lips. "Okay. You can marry her."

Erin hears all about Jillian's mom and Mark. Apparently, they're having a wedding in the summer. Erin's never been to a wedding. She asks Jillian if she's going to be the flower girl, and she just laughs so hard her apple juice comes out of her nose.

The fifth grade is pretty miserable without Jillian in her class. Luckily, she only got half of Chris Christopher in her class, Greg Christopher. Jillian has Chris Turner in her class. They swap stories of all the mean things they say.

Neither of their teachers are as awesome as Mrs. Albertson was. Erin's teacher, Mr. Murphy, doesn't believe in letting kids work ahead. He says if she finishes her work, she's to sit at her desk quietly.

Jillian's teacher, Mr. O'Neal, doesn't like when kids are smarter than him, which isn't good because as far as Erin knows, Jillian is smarter than most of the teachers at the school. One day, she waits for Jillian at their Spot all lunch, and she never shows up. The next day at recess, she finds out that Jillian spent all lunch in the principal's office for talking back to Mr. O'Neal.

Jillian kicks the ground when she tells the story. "His answer was wrong. All I did was correct him, but he didn't believe me."

Erin bites her lip. She knows better than to correct teachers when they're wrong, but Jillian doesn't care about anything like that. She likes to cause trouble.

"Don't worry. Soon we'll be at middle school, and I bet all the teachers there'll appreciate you," Erin says.

Middle school. The promised land. Based on the location of their elementary school, half their grade won't be attending the same middle school as Erin and Jillian. They've already checked and double checked that they're both going to be at the same one. Most of the kids who are mean to them, including Chris Christopher, are going to be at the other one. Hopefully there will be enough new kids from the other elementary schools that the whole 'Ghost Girl and Reptilian Jillian' thing dies out.

The school year draws to a close, and they make plans to meet up at the library again like they did last summer. Jillian says she'll probably be busy with her mom's wedding, but she'll try to come as much as she can.

They say goodbye on the last day, and then Erin doesn't see Jillian for a month. It's into August before she finally shows up at the library. Erin's still been coming every day, just in case.

She drops her book on the floor and leaps out of her chair when she sees her. "RJ!"

Jillian beams, but she looks a little sad, too. "GG."

"Where have you been?"

"Ummm…well, my mom got married, you know."

"Right, of course. How was it?"

"Nice," Jillian says.

"So Mark is your stepdad now?"

"Yep."

Usually Jillian is more talkative than this. Erin feels like something is wrong, like there's something she's not telling her.

"Is everything okay?"

"Yep," Jillian says again. "Whatcha reading?"

Erin looks down at her dropped book. She stoops to pick it up and make sure the pages aren't bent. "It's about atoms. Did you know that everything in the entire world is made up of atoms? They're like tiny little microscopic things that build everything. Like Lego blocks, but you can't see them."

"Cool," Jillian says. "What are they made of? Cheese?"

Erin laughs. "Even smaller particles. Protons, neutrons, and electrons. The protons are positive and the electrons are negative, so they're attracted to each other. And they're made up of even _smaller_ parts."

"Neato. What happens if you disassemble them? Can you put them back together in a different way?"

"It's not that easy. They're _really_ small."

"That sounds like a challenge," Jillian says. "I think you can pull anything apart and put it back together if you have the right tools."

They keep on discussing that, Jillian squeezing onto the chair beside Erin so they can read the book together, and Erin forgets all about how weird Jillian was being when she first arrived.

Well, weirder than usual.

They meet up a few more times during the rest of the summer, and each time Jillian seems a little quieter. Erin wonders if she's just upset about her mom getting married.

Before Erin knows it, it's her first day of middle school. She's a little scared about finding Jillian in such a big school. They even have lockers to hold their stuff, which is a big step up. The older kids look like teenagers. They're so _tall._

All day, she searches for a mess of blonde hair, a patchwork bag. Jillian isn't in her class or in her electives. She's nowhere to be found in the locker bay. At lunch, Erin circles the building and the playground twice, even roams the entire field. By the time the bell rings, she hasn't even had time to eat her lunch.

She stays hopeful. Maybe they've just been going in circles this whole time, never quite crossing paths at the right moment.

She looks the second day, too.

And the third.

And the whole first week.

By the second week, she's stopped. She finds a new Spot on the field and waits there.

By the third week, she's given up. Jillian's not here. She's not coming.

She takes the lizard pin off her bag.


	2. ii

ii.

 _Jillian's mom and Mark sit across from her in the living room of their apartment._

 _"Honey, we think this is best for you. Don't you agree?"_

 _Jillian feels like someone's poured a bunch of honey in her brain. Best for her? How could this possibly be best for her?_

 _Now that her mom and Mark are married, they have enough money that her mom doesn't have to work at the factory anymore. Now she has a bunch of free time, and apparently she's going to use her free time to do something that Dr. Hirata talked about a long time ago._

 _"Homeschooling?" Jillian repeats. The word sounds strange. She doesn't like it._

 _Mark smiles softly. "Your principal and teachers have been very clear about you being bored in class. You're not being challenged. Isn't that right, Jillian?"_

 _"I…" Yes, it's technically right…but she doesn't care anymore. Not while she has Erin._

 _"We know you haven't had the greatest time at school, baby," her mom says. "You deserve to be challenged. You're a very smart girl, and it's about time that you get all the opportunities you deserve."_

 _"But you don't know as much as my teachers," Jillian says._

 _Her mom laughs. "I'll be teaching you subjects like English and history, the things I'm good at. We're going to hire people to teach you science and math."_

 _"But…but why can't I just skip a grade again?"_

 _"Oh, babygirl. Dr. Hirata thinks you could be learning at least at the high-school-level, but probably university-level within the next few years. You aren't going to get that kind of education in the public school system, even by skipping several grades. Plus we know that socially, you've been struggling. Skipping more grades would just put you further at risk."_

 _At risk? At risk for what?_

 _"You can't homeschool me. I'll miss my best friend," Jillian blurts._

 _Her mom blinks. "Who?"_

 _"Erin. Her name is Erin," Jillian says quickly. "She likes math and wants to be a scientist when she grows up."_

 _Her mom and Mark exchange a long look. "Honey…" Her mom smiles sadly. "You don't need to lie to us, okay?"_

 _They think she's making Erin up. Why wouldn't they, when this is the first time Jillian's ever mentioned her? She feels like crying._

 _"I promise this is going to be good for you, baby," her mom says. "Okay?"_

 _Jillian digs her heels into the couch and fights back tears. "Okay."_

 _She doesn't tell Erin. She sees her at the library, and she doesn't tell her. She listens to Erin talk about middle school, and she doesn't tell her. She can't. It would hurt her too much. And it hurts Jillian to think about Erin being hurt._

* * *

Erin sits in a toilet stall with her feet pulled up out of view and cries as quietly as she can. She's perfected the art of this in her nearly two years in middle school.

Middle school. Not the promised land. Even worse than elementary school.

Word travelled like wildfire about her ghost. It won't stop haunting her even after changing schools, somehow followed her from elementary school. Chris Christopher may be gone, but now there are even bigger, meaner bullies that make her long for the days of Chris Christopher's half-witted insults that never made sense.

In middle school, the other kids deface her locker, steal her lunch and flush it down the toilet, set her up in class to look like an idiot.

Middle school is hell.

The door slams against the wall and footsteps enter the bathroom. Erin holds her breath.

"Ghost Girl, we know you're in here." It's Heather Cross, one of the meanest girls Erin's ever met.

The stall behind her clangs as one of her cronies shoves it open. Erin jumps.

A few seconds later, the head of Lisa Hilde pokes under Erin's stall with an evil grin. "Found her."

Erin closes her eyes and steels herself for whatever they've got planned for her.

* * *

Jillian thinks about Erin all the time. For a while, she goes to the public library just to see if she'll run into her. She convinces her mom that it's necessary for her homeschooling, and soon she's going every single day after 3:00pm, when she knows Erin is most likely to be there.

She never comes.

After a while, Jillian starts writing little notes on scraps of paper, just in case.

 _GG_

 _I'm sorry_

 _x RJ_

She sticks one inside every single book that Erin's ever checked out. She has them all memorized. Photographic memory, and all that. Then she puts one inside every book that Erin _might_ check out, on math and science and even inside every copy of Jane Austen's novels that the library has.

Every day, she checks all of them to see if Erin's written her back.

She never does.

The librarian catches her doing it one day and says that if she doesn't stop leaving notes inside the books, she'll be banned from the library.

She keeps doing it anyway, just more sneakily.

* * *

Erin's parents must finally realize how much she's being tormented at school, because they take pity on her and agree to let her go to science camp the summer before eighth grade. It's five weeks long, and far enough away from Battle Creek that nobody she knows will be there. Not that anyone she knows would ever _go_ to science camp to begin with.

It's like a dream come true. Five weeks away from her parents, away from everyone, and she gets to learn about science.

Her parents drop her off at the gate to the camp and don't even come out of the car to say goodbye. She doesn't care much as she drags her small suitcase through the gravel to follow the posted arrows. She eventually finds a perky counsellor who checks a list and puts her in Cabin 3.

The cabins aren't cabins so much as they are cinderblock rectangles, but she's still excited as she makes her way there. She pulls open the door and steps inside to find some other girls already waiting there.

"Hi!" a short black girl with thick purple glasses says. "I'm Dee! Welcome to Cabin 3." She giggles. "That rhymed. You can take any bed that doesn't have stuff on it."

Erin smiles and zeros in on a bottom bunk that looks free. There's someone already stretched out on the top bunk, facing the wall, with blonde hair pulled back into a messy bun.

"I'm Erin," she says to Dee, and throws her backpack onto the empty bed.

Quicker than she can process what's happening, there's a flurry of movement from the top bunk.

"GG?"

Erin freezes. Looks up.

It's Jillian.

* * *

Jillian can hardly believe her eyes. _Years_ of trying to contact Erin, and now she's standing right in front of her?

She scrambles down from the top bunk with her mouth hanging wide open. Erin looks just as stunned. They stand across from each other and just stare for a while.

"You know each other?" Dee asks.

Erin nods, her lips pressed together.

Jillian licks her own lips and jabs her thumb in the vague direction of the door. "Can we talk outside? Can I explain?"

For a second, she thinks maybe Erin won't agree. But finally she nods again.

They go outside to the forested area behind their cabin. Jillian takes a deep breath.

"I'm sorry," she says.

"What happened?" Erin says, her voice very small. "Did you move?"

Jillian looks down and kicks at the dirt with her already-filthy shoes. "No. My mom and Mark pulled me from school to homeschool me."

"Why?"

"Because they thought I wasn't being challenged enough. Which was true, I guess."

"Why didn't you tell them you didn't want that?"

"I tried," Jillian says. "I really did, GG. I promise. They didn't believe me that I had a friend. They thought I made you up."

"Oh." Erin's lip wobbles. "Why didn't you try to phone me?"

"I don't know your phone number."

"We're in the phone book," Erin says with a frown.

Jillian blinks. "I didn't even think of that."

"How could you have not thought of that?"

"I don't know," Jillian admits. "I wrote you a bunch of notes, though, and left them in library books for you. I almost got banned because of it."

"I don't go to the library anymore," Erin says.

"Oh…why not?"

Erin shrugs. "It's not the same anymore."

They're quiet. Off in the distance, there's some excited shouting.

"I can't believe we're both here," Jillian says, the reality of that sinking in for the first time. Five weeks of uninterrupted time with Erin to hopefully make up for two years apart.

Erin looks like the same thing is occurring to her. "Neither can I. This is…wow."

An excited smile spreads on her face, and Jillian thinks maybe she's been forgiven.

* * *

It still doesn't feel _real_ to Erin that Jillian's here. She hasn't changed much—she's bigger, but still small and scrawny. She mostly looks the same. Same mismatched clothes, same messy hair (although now she pulls it back out of her face with a blue bandana and a bun). Same old Jillian.

The whole camp gathers that night for a welcome cookout and bonfire. Earlier in the day, each cabin did some icebreakers and had to come up with a science-related name for their cabin.

At the bonfire, they go around and introduce their cabins.

Jillian puffs her chest out as their appointed representative and announces the name the two of them suggested. "We're…the Protons."

The rest of the Protons cheer.

The other cabins introduce themselves and none stand out (the Robots, the Supernovas, the Meteorites, the Bunsen Burners) until one. A tall boy with a hook-like nose introduces his cabin as the Electrons.

Jillian elbows Erin's side. "I smell a camp rivalry," she whispers in Erin's ear.

Erin laughs quietly. "Protons are supposed to be attracted to electrons, remember? Maybe there'll be less rivalry and more…romance."

Jillian makes a face like the thought disgusts her. "Ugh. No thanks."

Erin stares across the fire at the Electron boys. Some of them are kind of cute, even though they're all the types who would be called nerds and exist at the bottom of the social ladder in school. When you only compare them to each other, though, some of them aren't that bad looking. One boy with untidy brown hair catches her looking at him and gives a tiny smile. Erin blushes.

"You like him?" Jillian asks.

"How could I? I don't even know him," Erin says, not taking her eyes off the boy.

Jillian hums.

* * *

The camp has all sorts of activities and discussions in different subjects depending on what you're interested in. Because Jillian and Erin are interested in a lot of the same things, they end up in a lot of the same places. And they even end up in some activities they _aren't_ interested in. Jillian sits through a class on math with Erin, and Erin joins her in a robotics workshop. Jillian doesn't know a lot about robots, but she can build anything if she tries hard enough. Erin, on the other hand, is completely out of her element.

Luckily, they have to work in pairs to develop and build a robot over the next five weeks for a showcase and contest at the end.

Jillian runs her tongue along her top teeth. "Don't worry, GG, I got this."

"I can try to figure out the programming if you can build it," Erin says.

Jillian holds her hand up for a high five. "Teamwork!"

The camp also has non-sciencey activities for them to help them connect with nature, or whatever. They try kayaking and end up in a two-person kayak together, paddling in circles out on the lake that the camp is nestled on.

"RJ—" Erin laughs— "RJ, stop—" She laughs more, unable to get the words out.

Jillian looks over her shoulder at Erin, losing it in her spot. "Stop what?" she says, letting a grin stretch on her face.

" _Paddling_ like that! We need to coordinate!"

"I don't know what you're talking about, GG." Jillian splashes her paddle in the water to prove her point, then flicks it up, showering both of them in water.

" _Jillian!"_ Erin squeals.

Jillian cackles, her laugh echoing across the lake.

* * *

The Protons are having their own bonfire one night and roasting marshmallows. Well, the rest of them are roasting marshmallows. Jillian is burning them. Intentionally. Erin can hardly stand to watch it.

When her fifth one goes up in flames, she swings her stick up. "Look! Isn't it pretty?"

"Get that away from me," Erin says, ducking her head out of the flame's way.

Jillian blows out the flaming marshmallow and swings the stick at Erin again, pretending to narrowly avoid hitting her head. "Wh-whooaa, whoa, I think I'm gonna hit—"

In all her joking, she accidentally brought the marshmallow too close, and it's collided with Erin's hair. Erin leaps off of her stump and out of the way, dropping her own stick and its partially-roasted marshmallow into the dirt. Her hand flies to the side of her head and comes back sticky.

"Jillian!"

Jillian at least looks sheepish. "Whoops. I didn't mean to do that. Sorry, Er. I'll help you wash it out."

Erin grumbles as they make their way to the toilets (the one thing she loves about this camp is that there are actual buildings, no yucky outhouses). When they get there, Jillian instructs her to sit on the counter.

Erin hesitantly hops her butt up onto the counter while Jillian wets some paper towels. With extreme care and precision, she brings the soppy stack up to Erin's hair. Cold water runs down her neck and she flinches away.

"Sorry," Jillian murmurs.

"S'okay."

"This isn't working," Jillian says after a few seconds. She throws the paper towel in the trash and then her fingers are running through Erin's hair, carefully trying to pick out the sticky marshmallow.

Erin swallows. Jillian's nose is all scrunched up, her brow furrowed, her eyes deep in concentration behind her yellow-lensed glasses. She's grown into them a bit. They no longer fall off her face quite as much.

The one florescent light overhead flickers.

Jillian continues working through Erin's hair, pulling out little white clumps of marshmallow and smearing them on another piece of paper towel. Her tongue pokes out between her lips.

"Just about done," she says quietly.

The light flickers again, dims.

Jillian wets another sheet of paper towel with some soap, rings it out in the sink this time, and then runs it over the chunk of Erin's hair.

The light flickers one last time and then goes out, plunging them into darkness.

Erin's heart stops.

She's afraid of the dark. Really afraid. Has been ever since the ghost.

"Jillian?" she says quickly, panicked.

Soft skin bumps her arm and then she feels Jillian's hand on her wrist. "I'm here. I'm here, Erin."

She can't see her at all. "Jillian," she says again.

"I know. I'm here. Hold on, I've got my flashlight."

A few seconds later, the room illuminates with a narrow beam of light. Erin relaxes a bit.

"Come on," Jillian says. "Hop down and we can get outta here."

Erin wiggles off the counter.

Jillian grabs her hand. "Let's go."

She pulls her out of the building, following the beam from her flashlight, and outside into the forest. Erin feels safe with her, despite the dark. Jillian's hand is sticky with marshmallow, but she doesn't mind.

Then the flashlight blinks out.

"Crud," Jillian says. "Erin?"

Erin's panicking again.

Jillian squeezes her hand. "I'm still here. I have great night vision…I can lead us back, no problem."

"Okay," Erin manages to get out.

"We'll go slowly so we don't die."

Erin makes a noise.

"From tripping over something, to be clear," Jillian continues, clearly blabbering on to distract Erin. It's working. "Although who knows what's in these forests."

"Bears, probably," Erin says. Then she wonders if Jillian will remember what she's referencing.

"Yeah. Probably bears," Jillian replies, and Erin can hear the smile in her voice. So she does remember.

Wait, of course she does. She remembers everything. How could Erin have forgotten that?

Still gripping her hand tightly, Jillian leads them through the dark.

Before Erin knows it, they're back in the clearing where the campfire is. Erin holds onto Jillian's hand for a few more seconds before realizing that they're out of danger and releasing it, embarrassed.

"Thank you," she says.

"No problemo, GG," Jillian says with a wide smile.

* * *

Jillian rolls onto her stomach on her bed and pokes her head over the edge. "Psst. GG."

Erin's head emerges below her. "What?"

"Let's go exploring."

"It's almost curfew."

"So?"

Erin hesitates, and Jillian can see her chewing on her lip. "Okay," she says finally.

They pack up Erin's backpack with Jillian's flashlight (with freshly replaced batteries), jackets in case they get cold, and some of the snacks that Jillian smuggled into the camp.

One of the other girls in their cabin, Sahij, sees them.

"What are you doing?"

"Going on an adventure," Jillian says.

"If you get caught out after curfew, the whole bunk will be punished," Sahij says.

"So we won't get caught." Jillian throws Erin's backpack over her shoulder and beckons her to follow.

As soon as they're outside, Erin turns to her. "She's right, you know."

"You worry too much."

That quiets Erin. The two of them walk through the forest.

"Where are we going?"

"Dunno yet," Jillian says. "We should try and explore Cabin 13."

Erin stops dead and grabs Jillian's elbow to stop her, too. "No."

"Come on, we could find out if it's _really_ haunted!"

Legend has it, one of the kids who attended the camp back in the 60s died mysteriously in Cabin 13 and has haunted it ever since. The cabin's still standing, but they don't use it anymore.

"I don't want to find out if it's really haunted," Erin says. "I've had enough ghosts to last a lifetime."

"But dontcha want to see another one just to prove that they exist?"

Erin frowns. "Why do I have to prove they exist? I thought you believed me?"

"I do! I thought you wanted everyone else to believe you, too?"

"What good is seeing a ghost together, though? We're still the only ones who will believe it."

"But at least with two of us, they might believe us _more._ "

Erin smooths down her bangs, which she always does when she's nervous. "Fine. Let's go."

"Really?" Jillian says excitedly. "Score!"

* * *

Erin feels super uneasy as they make their way to the abandoned cabin, which is well out-of-bounds and off-limits to campers. The building has tall weeds growing up the sides of it and looks creepy as heck. She hangs back as Jillian approaches the building and peers through one of the windows.

"What do you see?" Erin calls.

"Darkness," Jillian says. She moves over to the door and tries it, looking back at Erin excitedly when it opens. "Come on!"

"You go in first," Erin says.

Jillian gets the flashlight and then drops the backpack on the ground outside the cabin. She steps inside and disappears from view.

Erin takes a few steps closer to the building. "RJ?"

"Come in! There's nothing in here."

Erin slaps away a mosquito and lingers by the door. She sticks her head in and sees Jillian on her hands and knees, looking under one of the bunk beds. There's some light in the building, but not a lot. It seems to have far fewer windows than Cabin 3 does. Erin takes a deep breath and steps inside.

There are still blankets on the beds, but they have holes in them like they've been chewed by rodents. The air smells gross. Erin wrinkles her nose and gags.

"What's that smell?"

"Smells like death," Jillian sings. She sits up on her heels. "Something's decomposing. What if it's the dead kid?"

Erin covers her mouth in horror. "Jillian!"

"Kidding. They wouldn't have left him here…unless they _did._ "

"I'm leaving. I don't like this," Erin says, backing towards the door.

"No, wait! I'm only joking. It's probably an animal. Don't worry, I'll find it!"

Erin stands by the open door and tries to suck in air from outside. Jillian roams around the bunk, swinging her flashlight beam in all the corners. Finally, she lets out a triumphant cheer.

"Got it! Looks like a rat."

Erin shudders. Jillian strides over and hands her the flashlight.

"Hold this. I'm gonna get a stick."

"To do _what?"_ Erin says as Jillian passes by and slips out the door.

There's no answer. Erin waits. Looks around the deserted room. There is a funny feeling in the air. She's got goosebumps even though it's not cold. Maybe it _is_ haunted.

Jillian squeezes past her again holding a stick and a curved piece of bark. "You might wanna wait outside if you're squeamish," she says.

Erin doesn't have to be told twice. She bolts out the door and waits out there for a few moments until Jillian emerges, holding the piece of bark far away from her body. Erin catches a glimpse of something brown and pink and turns her head away, feeling like she's gonna barf.

She hears twigs snapping and bushes rustling as Jillian, presumably, takes it far away.

"You can look again, I'm back."

Erin looks back to see Jillian, empty handed again.

"Are you going back in?"

"Hell yeah," Jillian says. "Now we can properly look around."

"It still stinks in there."

"It'll air out. Gimme the flashlight."

Erin waits outside for another few minutes before she finally surrenders and goes back inside the cabin. As predicted, it still smells foul. She gags again and pulls her shirt up over her mouth and nose. She sees that Jillian has knotted her blue bandana from her hair over her own mouth and nose.

"We need an air freshener in here," Jillian says, and even though Erin can't see her mouth, she knows she's smiling. She can see it in the way her eyes scrunch up.

Erin just rolls her eyes. "So what do you think? Haunted or not?"

"What do you think? You're the ghost expert." She says that sincerely, not sarcastically at all.

Erin's pretty sure that seeing one ghost doesn't make her an expert, but she plays along. "Well, we haven't been here that long. We should probably wait a little longer and see if any ghostly activity happens."

"Sounds like a plan. Good thing we brought snacks for a stakeout." Jillian goes and grabs the backpack from outside and comes back in.

"Wait, wait, don't eat anything without sanitizing your hands," Erin says, pulling her travel container of wet wipes from her back pocket.

Jillian sticks her tongue out but holds out her hands. Erin passes her a wipe and Jillian washes off her hands. Then she pops the lid off her can of Pringles and lifts her bandana to shove three in her mouth.

Erin makes a face. "How can you be eating when it smells this bad?"

Jillian shrugs goofily. "They're good. I love Pringles. You want one?"

Erin nods after a moment and Jillian holds the tube to her. Erin washes her own hands, then pulls out one and examines it.

"Haven't you ever had a Pringle before?" Jillian asks. "You're supposed to eat it, not stare at it."

"It's a cool shape, that's all," Erin says. "It reminds me of this math thing. A parabola? It's like a big U shape." She draws one in the air to illustrate.

"You and your math," Jillian says, popping another one into her mouth. "All I see when I look at a Pringle is a tasty snack."

Erin pinches her nose so she won't be able to smell the air, and takes a bite from the chip.

* * *

Jillian eventually sits on the floor with her back against one of the bunk beds. Erin refuses to sit down on either the floor or a bed, not when there have been rats running around.

"What time is it?" Erin asks.

Jillian checks her big green watch, which likes to rotate on her wrist because it's too big for her. "9:06pm," she announces.

"We're officially late for curfew," Erin says.

"Ghosts are more important," Jillian says.

They wait for a while longer. Erin looks uncomfortable standing, so Jillian takes her hoodie out of the backpack and lays it on the ground so Erin can sit on it.

"You didn't have to do that," Erin says, but she sits down anyway.

"It's okay. It's dirty anyway." She doesn't mind if a little rat poop gets on it if it means Erin will be more comfortable.

They sit across from each other, silent, listening for any ghost sounds. So far, there hasn't been a single creepy moan, no unexplained bumps in the night, nothin'.

A swift breeze suddenly passes through the cabin, and Jillian's arm hairs stand up. "Didya feel that?"

Erin nods excitedly, even if she does look a bit terrified. She lifts her bum up and scoots Jillian's jacket across so it's beside Jillian, then she sits down beside her. Her arm brushes against Jillian's and it makes her heart beat a little faster.

"Are you scared?" Erin asks.

Jillian wants to say no, but she must be, if her heart is beating like it is. That's how the autonomic nervous system works. "Yes," she says.

They sit very still for a few minutes. Nothing else happens.

After a while, Erin rests her head against Jillian's shoulder. Jillian swallows.

"I don't think there's a ghost here," Erin says. She sounds sad. "Sometimes I wonder if they're real at all."

That surprises Jillian. A little hesitantly, she wraps her arm around Erin's shoulders. "What are you talking about? Of course they're real. You saw one!"

"What if I didn't, though? What if I'm just crazy?"

"Ghosts are real, GG. I promise." She pulls Erin in a little tighter.

"Thanks, RJ," Erin says, her voice small.

Jillian kind of wants to hug her forever, to protect her, which is weird because Erin's older than her. It's also weird because the thing that Erin needs protecting from isn't something that Jillian can really ward off, like a bully. The bully is inside Erin's head.

She'll try anyway, though.

* * *

They go back to the abandoned cabin a few more times, but they never have any luck. Somehow, they never get caught for being out past curfew.

Their robot is coming along very well. They've named it the Ghost Lizard as a combination of both of their superhero identities, and it's going to be able to fly with rockets _and_ shoot lasers out its mouth. It's ambitious, but between the two of them, they're going to make it happen.

As Jillian predicted, the Protons and the Electrons _do_ start a bit of a feud. A feud that Jillian herself starts, much to Erin's horror. It begins with a traditional (and, looking back, tame) TPing of their cabin, which Jillian does with a few other Proton girls. Erin refuses to take part.

Then the boys fire back by putting frogs in Cabin 3.

Erin joins in after that, and they rig up a bucket of paint to fall in the Electrons' cabin.

It's all pretty standard summer camp stuff. The counsellors don't seem too bothered by it. Apparently this happens every year between at least two of the cabins. It's tradition.

The prank wars continue back and forth, led by Jillian and from the Electron side of things, a boy named Jackson.

One night, Erin wakes up to hands grabbing her and covering her mouth before she can scream. In the semi-darkness, she can make out the face of Jackson and a few other boys. They drag her out of bed, kicking and struggling, and take her all the way back to their bunk. There, they tie her hands together and tether her to the frame of one of the beds.

Their cabin smells yucky, like boy. They wrap a bandana much like Jillian's around her mouth so she can't talk and sit back to admire their work. Erin struggles against her restraints, getting angrier by the second under the gazes of the roomful of Electron boys. She catches the eye of the one boy who she saw at the welcome bonfire. His name is Teddy, she knows that now. He looks apologetic.

"Stop moving so much. You're going to give yourself rope burns," Jackson says. "We're not going to hurt you. You're just the bait."

Bait? For what?

"See," he continues, "we need to get your friend Jillian to come looking for you. That way, she'll fall right into our trap. We left a ransom note in your bunk. Wonder how long it's going to take?"

What trap? What are they going to do to Jillian? Erin pulls at the rope some more, trying to loosen it to no avail.

"Now, if you'll excuse us, we're going to go get in position," Jackson says. He smiles a little evilly, pats her head, and leaves with most of the other boys behind him.

Only Teddy and another boy stay behind. Probably to guard her. She listens to the sound of the other boys mumbling outside.

"I have to take a leak," the other boy says to Teddy. "Be right back. Don't let her escape."

As soon as he's gone, it's just her and Teddy. His eyes are remorseful. He pauses for a moment, then comes over to her.

"If I take off the bandana, do you promise not to scream?" he asks. "I swear, we aren't going to do anything bad to your friend. It's all just for fun, like the stuff you've done to us."

Erin nods.

Slowly, he unties the bandana and lets it fall.

"What are they doing to her?" she says immediately, not screaming like she promised. What good would screaming do? Jillian wouldn't be able to hear her from here, but it would alert all the counsellors.

"A coupla the guys are climbing up on the trees with buckets of maple syrup," he confesses.

Oh. Okay, that's fairly harmless. She'd still warn Jillian if she could, but at least they aren't doing something really bad, something that could hurt her.

"I'm sorry about kidnapping you," Teddy says. "I tried to convince them not to, or at least to get one of the other girls, but Jackson said it had to be you or Jillian might not come."

Erin warms a little at the truth in that statement. She doesn't think it's going to be long at all before Jillian realizes she's missing and comes looking for her. Erin can just picture her storming across the camp. She's probably already plotting her revenge.

"Why does it have to be Jillian?" Erin asks.

Teddy shrugs. "She's the leader, isn't she? The one behind all the pranks? Plus, I'm pretty sure Jackson likes her."

Erin tries to digest that information and puzzles over the way it doesn't quite sit right in her stomach. "If he likes her, why does he keep pranking her?"

"What else is he supposed to do?"

"I dunno, tell her?"

He rolls his eyes. "Yeah, whatever. She's doing it, too."

"Well, yeah, but not because…" Erin trails off. _Does_ Jillian like Jackson? Is that why she's so passionate about pranking him? Wouldn't she have told Erin if she did? She's had lots of opportunities. They talk about the Electron boys all the time.

Then again, Erin kinda likes Teddy, and she hasn't told Jillian about it. She's not really sure why. Maybe because Teddy seems a bit immature and she's a little embarrassed that she likes him. All the Electron boys are immature, though, and if Jillian _does_ like Jackson, then maybe she'll understand.

The other boy comes back from peeing and frowns when he sees her. "Why'd you take her gag off?"

"She's not gonna scream," Teddy says.

"Whatever," the boy says. "We just got word from Kyle that Blue Jay saw the note and is on her way. Apparently she looks _mad._ This is gonna be hilarious. We should untie the hostage and make her watch."

"I have a name," Erin says. "And what did you just call Jillian?"

"Blue Jay," Teddy says. "Because her bandana and J for—"

"Jillian," Erin finishes. "That's a good one. Do you have a codename for me, too?"

Teddy looks hesitant to tell her. "Uh…Red Robin."

"Oh." She tries to figure that out. "Why?"

The other boy looks smug. "Your chest goes all red when you get angry."

Well, it's better than Ghost Girl.

"Enough chitchat," the other boy says. "Get on your feet, prisoner."

"Cool it, Sean," Teddy says.

"I can't get on my feet," Erin says. "You guys tied me to the freaking bunkbed."

Teddy appraises her. "Do you _want_ to watch the prank?"

She doesn't, not really, but she also wants to know what's going on. Maybe she'll be able to warn Jillian, somehow. She nods.

Teddy carefully unties her from the bed and captures her wrists behind her back in his hands. "Sorry," he says quietly. They lead her over to the open door, where she can see Jillian's tiny form stalking in the distance. The sun is rising behind her. She looks furious.

Sean ties the bandana back around her mouth so she can't say anything else. All she can do is watch as Jillian gets closer and closer, until she must see Erin's form in the doorframe.

"Erin," she calls, her voice panicked as she begins to sprint.

Erin's eyes dart upwards to the trees, where she can make out the forms of several boys positioned around. They're almost all up there. There's no way at least _one_ of them won't hit her.

Erin's eyes go back to Jillian. _Turn back,_ she tries to communicate with her eyes. Then at the last second she realizes her head isn't restrained and nods her chin up towards the sky.

Jillian falters, slows, and looks up.

And then the sky rains maple syrup. Well, _rains_ in the sense that a massive stream of it pours down and splatters all over Jillian. Like if a cloud let out all the water at once. Not like actual rain.

Jillian trips and skids in the dirt, no doubt skinning her knees. The rest of the boys huck maple syrup down at her. Some of it hits her and some of it misses.

Erin, finding the strength of ten Erins, breaks out of Teddy's hold and runs.

* * *

Jillian isn't quite sure what just happened, but whatever it was, it was pretty spectacular. She pushes herself up from the ground, feeling the sticky, heavy weight of whatever it is that they threw on her settling on her skin and in her hair. It smells sweet, sugary. Her palms are a mess of dirt, blood, and sticky brown stuff. Some of it runs into her mouth.

Maple syrup.

At least it's tasty?

"Jillian!" Erin calls. Suddenly she's right there, bent in front of Jillian, helping her up. Jillian can barely see through the sticky gloop, which is now running down from her face. Erin tries to wipe some of the syrup from her eyes, but it just makes it worse. Her eyes sting.

"I can't see, Erin," she says.

"It's okay. I'm here. We're going to get this washed off, okay?"

"Are you okay?" The last thing Jillian saw before they bombarded her, Erin was being confined by two Electron boys and had a red bandana wrapped around her mouth. She must've got free. What did they _do_ to her? Jillian doesn't care about the maple syrup, but if they hurt Erin…

"I'm fine, RJ, really! I was just the bait to get you to come. They knew you would."

Of course she would. It didn't take her long at all to realize Erin was gone. She wasn't snoring. She assumed she was in the bathroom, but when she didn't come back after ten minutes, she crawled down to see the ransom note.

She figured it was probably a set up, but she would've never chanced Erin. There was no time to figure out a plan. She just had to go.

She hears the laughter of all the boys overhead.

"Good one, fellas!" she shouts good-naturedly. It really was a good one. "Kicking it up a notch, I see? Message received. You'd better be quaking in your boots, got it? This means war. You hear me? War!"

"Come on, come on," Erin says, pulling her to her feet. "We gotta get outta here in case they have something else planned."

Jillian doubts it, otherwise they wouldn't be letting them go this easily. She follows Erin's lead, almost completely blinded by the syrup at this point. Erin grips her arm tightly, probably getting covered as well.

They enter a building, presumably the bathroom, and Erin nudges her forward gently. She reaches her hand out and it hits a tiled wall.

"You're in a shower stall," Erin says.

"Cool," Jillian says, and feels for the knob to turn the water on. She doesn't even bother stripping out of her clothes, just tries to wipe the maple syrup from her eyes.

"I'll go find you some new clothes and a towel," Erin says. "Be right back."

Jillian hears the sound of the door closing. She manages to get most of the syrup off her face and is able to open her eyes again. The floor of the shower stall is covered in globs of syrup and dirt and she realizes that some of her blood is swirling down the drain, too. She bends to examine the scrapes all up and down her shins and knees. They weren't hurting before, but now that she's aware of them, they're starting to sting. Her palms, too, which are covered in shallow cuts and bits of gravel. They're probably going to get infected from the syrup getting in. She's going to have to go to the nurse's station after this.

She pulls the shower curtain closed and starts to peel off her soggy pajamas, then lets them slop to the floor.

The door opens.

"RJ?" Erin calls. "I'm back."

Jillian turns and peeks out from the side of the curtain. Erin's holding a stack of clothes and some towels.

"I brought shampoo, soap, and a washcloth for you to scrub with. It's pretty clean. And then I've got your towel and some clean clothes."

"Thanks, GG. You da best."

Erin hands her the washcloth, soap, and shampoo. Jillian can see now that Erin does have syrup down her arm and the side of her own pajamas. She doesn't seem to notice.

"How are you so _fine?"_ Erin says. "I'd be crying right now if I was you."

Jillian disappears back behind the curtain and sets the bottles on the built-in shelf. She soaps up the washcloth and starts scrubbing down her arms and legs.

"It was a good prank," Jillian says simply. "I respect them for that. And I know that we'll get them back with an even better one."

She hears the sound of the tap starting and figures Erin's washing off the syrup on her own body. There wasn't much, so she can probably get away without a full shower.

When Jillian's satisfied that she's scrubbed down every inch of her skin, she reaches for the shampoo bottle. Seconds away from squeezing some into her palm, she catches herself.

That's going to sting like a wasp on the cuts there. And is it really so smart to wash her hair with hands that are still kinda bleeding?

What is she supposed to do, though? Her hair is the worst part.

She contemplates for a full minute.

"Erin?" she says finally.

"Yeah?"

"Do…agh." She blows out a puff of air. "My hands are all cut."

"I figured," Erin replies sadly. "What do you need? Should I go find some bandages or something?"

"No, it's just…I don't think I can wash my hair. Is there any way…" She shakes her head even though Erin can't see her. "Never mind."

"No, what?"

"Could you help me wash it?" Jillian says quickly.

There's a long pause.

"Sure, of course," Erin says. "You rescued me…it's the least I can do. Do you want…um, to do it in the sink?"

"There's kind of…a lot."

"Of syrup?"

"Yeah."

"So…no sink?"

"I don't think so."

"So you just want me to…"

"Yeah."

"Oh."

"Too weird?"

"No, it's…okay. Um. Should…"

"I'm turning around."

"Okay. Just say when…"

"I'm facing the other way."

"Okay. I'll just…"

"Hi."

"Hi. Um. Where's the shampoo?"

"Shelf."

"Got it. I'll just…oh, ew."

"It's bad, right?"

"Yes. It's…that's fine. I can…"

"You're getting shampoo in my eye."

"Shoot, sorry."

"Now how will I know if you're looking at my butt?"

"How would you know anyway?"

"Like _this_."

"Your eyes are closed."

"There's shampoo in them."

"Well, I'm not looking at your butt."

"Good."

"Turn your head back. There's still a lot of syrup."

"In my butt?"

"In your _hair._ "

"Is it coming out?"

"A bit. Hold on, I need more shampoo."

"Don't get it in my eyes."

"I'll try."

"Hey! I don't think you're trying at all. That felt very deliberate."

"Sorry, sorry. If you'd stop _moving_ …"

"I'm cold."

"So am I, but you don't see me dancing all over the place."

"I don't see _anything._ There's shampoo in my eyes."

"Oh my _God_ , RJ. _Seriously?_ Okay. Hold on, I'll…there. Any better?"

"Yeah, a bit."

"Okay."

"Are you done yet? This is taking forever."

"You keep distracting me with your stupid eyes!"

"Excuuuuse me for wanting to be able to see things."

"You're really impatient."

"I've been told."

"Okay, I think I got as much out as I can. Get under the water to rinse it."

"It's cooold."

"I _know_. Do it so we can both get outta here."

"You're still so mean to me, all these years later."

"Oh, please. I'm washing maple syrup from your hair for you."

"Friendship level _unlocked._ "

* * *

From that moment on, all their free time is spent plotting how to get back at the Electrons. The other Protons stay out of it. They seem to know that this is Erin and Jillian's war now. They tell them they'll help out if need be, but everyone knows that Jillian will come up with a way better plan than any of them could.

And she does.

Erin is eating dinner in the mess hall when Jillian plunks her tray down and sits across from her.

"I've got it," she says.

Erin looks up from her baked potato. "The prank?"

Jillian nods. "We might need to steal some supplies, but I'm pretty confident."

"Supplies? Supplies from where?"

Jillian shrugs and digs into her own plate of food with gusto. "Here and there. You'll help me, right?"

"Absolutely."

(Later, Erin wonders if she should've asked what the plan was first before she agreed).

They set up shop in the abandoned Cabin 13, where they can build what they need to without any of the counsellors getting suspicious about what they're up to. Admittedly, it looks kind of like a bomb.

Probably because it is.

Well, not a _real_ bomb. Just a stink bomb. But, as Jillian calls it, the Strongest Stink Bomb Ever.

Erin doesn't ask why Jillian knows how to build _any_ type of bomb as an eleven-year-old. She knows that the answer is probably _because_. Jillian just seems to know how to do everything, and if she doesn't know how, she figures it out anyway.

It takes Jillian three days to assemble the stink bomb, using scavenged supplies and a Swiss Army knife that she always carries around. By the time she's finished, the stink bomb is quite impressive. It even has a remote detonator, just like a real bomb. The whole thing is a little scary looking, in Erin's opinion.

They plan to set it off one night after the rest of the camp has gone to sleep. That way, they can get all the Electrons at once while they're in their cabin. Jillian assures Erin that the stink bomb will be completely silent, or at least silent enough that it won't wake the counsellors and get them in trouble.

That night, they wait, fully dressed in their beds, until after midnight. Jillian climbs down silently from the top bunk and Erin knows that's her cue to follow her. They make their way outside quietly and walk quickly through the forest towards Cabin 13 to get the bomb from where they've stashed it.

They follow Jillian's flashlight beam back through the forest to the Electrons' cabin. Erin holds the flashlight while Jillian works quickly to set the stink bomb up outside the building, right by the windows. She swears it's strong enough that it doesn't need to be put inside for it to pack a punch. They creep back to the woods by Cabin 3, where they'll be able to watch the fun but retreat inside to their beds at the drop of a hat.

"We should probably wait a little longer before we set it off," Erin whispers.

At the moment she says that, she sees someone—a counsellor, probably—cross the camp. She shoves Jillian back deeper into the forest and fumbles the light off. They barely dare to breathe for fear of being caught, but the counsellor doesn't seem to see them.

Erin's heart is starting to race at the dark again, and without even saying anything, Jillian reaches out and takes her hand. That calms her.

They're quiet for a few long minutes. Finally, Jillian whispers, "That was close."

"You think they're gone?"

"Yeah, definitely. You can turn the light back on, probably."

Erin does, but she keeps her thumb on the switch just in case she needs to turn it off again.

Jillian leans against a tree. "I think you're right…we should wait a bit."

"Just to be safe," Erin agrees.

There's a long pause. Erin kind of wants to ask Jillian the question that's been plaguing her for a week. After a few minutes, she can't hold it back any longer.

"Hey, RJ?"

"Hm?"

"Do you like Jackson?"

"Jackson? I hate that guy! He's my nemesis, remember?"

"No, I mean…do you like-like him?"

"What? Are you drunk?" Jillian laughs and Erin has to shush her.

"He likes you. Teddy told me. That's why he's playing pranks on you. I thought maybe it was the same with you."

Erin can see Jillian's raised eyebrows even in the dark, they're that high. "He likes me? Like-likes me? Yeah, I don't think so."

"He does, I promise. So do you like him?"

"I told you, no. He's my nemesis."

"Oh."

A twig snaps as Jillian shifts. "Do you?"

"Like Jackson?"

"No, Teddy. You do, don't you?" There's something in Jillian's voice that Erin can't quite figure out.

"Maybe," Erin admits.

"He likes you back, doesn't he?"

"I don't know. He, um…he asked me if I wanted to go kayaking with him." It was a few days after the maple syrup day.

"What'd you say?"

"I said I'd think about it."

"He kidnapped you, you know."

"I know. It wasn't his idea, though. He felt really bad about it."

"Oh. Well…have fun kayaking, I guess."

Erin realizes what's in Jillian's voice. It's jealousy. She must be jealous that a boy likes Erin back. That doesn't make sense, though, because Jackson likes _her._ She supposes that doesn't mean a lot if Jillian doesn't like him.

"I'm kind of scared, though," Erin says.

"Of kayaking? That's why you wear a lifejacket, dummy."

"No, not of kayaking, _dummy_ ," Erin echoes. "I dunno, what if he wants to kiss me?"

"You're right…that could be a problem in a kayak."

" _No,_ Jill-i-an," Erin says, swatting Jillian's arm between syllables. "On land."

"What's wrong with that?"

"Well, I haven't…you know."

"What?"

"I haven't kissed a boy before. What if he has?"

"Kissed a boy?"

Erin shoves her. "Kissed a girl. God."

"He could've kissed a boy. It doesn't have to be a boy and a girl. Boys can kiss other boys and—"

"I _know_ , but that's not what I meant. All I meant is what if he's kissed someone before? I haven't. I don't know how. What if I do it wrong?"

"How could you do it wrong?" Jillian scoffs. "You just smoosh your mouths together."

"Have you done it?"

"No, but how hard could it possibly be? I built a stink bomb, and I hadn't done _that_ before."

"Wait, you hadn't?"

Jillian waves her hand. "Don't worry. It'll work just fine."

"Okaaay, ignoring _that_ …I don't think kissing is that simple."

"What, as building a stink bomb? Pretty sure kissing is waaay easier. Less chance for things to go poof." Jillian illustrates with her hands, which is a little concerning given she's holding the actual detonator in one of them.

"No, as simple as just smooshing mouths together. What do you do with your hands? Where do your noses go?"

"I don't think they leave your face."

"Oh my God. You're no help."

"Whaddya want me to say? You could always practice."

"On what, my pillow?" Erin snorts. "The other girls would laugh _so_ hard."

"You could practice on me," Jillian says.

Erin stares. Blinks.

 _What?_

* * *

Jillian isn't quite sure why she said that.

Sometimes she says things without thinking them through. Well, most times, actually. Dr. Hirata says she needs to work on her 'filter.'

She doesn't see a big problem with her suggestion, actually, but the way Erin's staring at her makes her think maybe _she_ does.

"What?" Jillian says.

"What do you mean 'practice on you'?"

"Exactly what you think it means? I have a mouth. Better than a pillow, right? You can figure out where your nose goes."

"Wouldn't that be weird, though?"

Jillian cocks her head to the side. "Why would it be weird? We're friends."

"Exactly?"

"It's just practice, GG. It's not for real."

"Well, I _know_ , but still..."

"Come on, you know you wanna." Jillian smacks her lips loudly in a kissy noise. "Prepare yourself for your daaate with Teddy." As she says that, she gets a little twinge in her stomach like she ate bad Chinese food or something. She hasn't had Chinese food, though, so she doesn't know what that means.

"I do like being prepared…" Erin says.

"Pucker up." Jillian makes more kissy noises.

"Wait, you don't mean right _now,_ do you?"

"When else? We're alone so nobody can make fun of you, plus it's dark so you don't have to look at me and you can pretend I'm Teddy." Jillian lowers her voice an octave. "Hi, Erin, I'm Teddy. Do you wanna kiss me?"

Erin laughs. "He doesn't sound anything like that."

"So? Whaddya say?"

Erin bites her lip. "I guess practicing is a good idea…right? Like studying before a test?"

"You'd never go into a test without studying," Jillian confirms.

"No, I wouldn't." Erin continues to chew on her lip.

"If you keep chewing like that, you won't have any lips left to kiss Teddy with."

Erin stops. "Are you sure this isn't weird?"

"Nah. And even if it is, don't we kinda live for weird?"

" _You_ do. I don't."

"Good point. But might I add that earlier this week you washed maple syrup out of my hair? That was pretty weird. But you were helping me out, and now I'm just helping _you_ out. It's no weirder."

Erin nods at that and takes a step closer, leaves crunching under her feet. One of her hands is clenched around the flashlight, and the other is just clenched into a fist. Jillian peels herself off the tree she's been leaning against and straightens up in interest. She didn't think Erin would actually agree to this.

They meet in the middle, still standing with some distance between them, though.

"Umm…" Erin says. "I don't…"

"Lips. Smoosh. Remember?"

"Okay, but—"

Jillian knows Erin is going to keep talking and overthinking, so she steps forward and smooshes their lips together. At first she kinda misses and only gets the corner of Erin's mouth, then she moves so her lips are _actually_ on Erin's.

Erin's lips are really soft and warm, and wetter than Jillian expected. It should be unpleasant, but it's not. It's sorta nice.

Except Erin is just kinda standing there, and Jillian realizes that maybe there _is_ more to kissing than just smooshing lips together, so she moves hers a bit so they're not just sitting there doing nothing, and then lifts her hand to touch the side of Erin's face.

It's around then that Erin's lips move a little too, like they're whispering something, which is nice, too.

Their noses don't go anywhere. They stay right on their faces, like Jillian predicted. They nestle side by side, fitting together well, so that's one problem solved.

Jillian always learns as she goes, trial and error, and this is no exception. She's learning a lot.

For example, she's learning that she really likes kissing Erin. Maybe more than she should, especially considering this is only supposed to be practice.

She realizes something, then, and she's not sure why she didn't realize it before. Some genius she is.

She likes Erin. Like-likes Erin. The kind of like that Erin was asking her about earlier.

She's never like-liked anyone before, or at least she thought she didn't, so she never really knew what people were talking about when they talked about crushes.

Now she realizes that she definitely has a crush on Erin. That's why her heart beats so fast when Erin touches her, and why it feels like she's swallowed Pop Rocks when she's talking to Erin (which she thought was just because talking to Erin is exciting), and most of all, why she likes kissing Erin so much.

Huh. That's interesting.

She wonders if she'll like kissing other girls too, or only Erin? That's probably a problem to work out some other time.

All this goes through her mind in a few seconds flat, because that's how fast her brain always works. It's really only been less than 10 seconds since they started kissing.

Suddenly, there's a boom so loud that they both startle apart, and they're lit up a lot more than they were a few seconds ago, and that's when Jillian realizes something _else_ that makes her wonder if Dr. Hirata mixed up her test results all those years ago.

Her thumb is holding down the stink bomb detonator button.

Oops.

* * *

Half the camp seems to come running towards the explosion, and stupidly, so do they.

There's a small blaze burning around the remnants of the stink bomb, which is sending up thick black smoke that smells just as awful as Jillian promised. Erin starts coughing.

"Stay back! Stay back!" one of the counsellors shouts.

"It's a bomb!" someone else shouts.

"Evacuate the cabin! Everyone out of there, now!"

"Someone call the police!"

"Screw the police, someone call bomb disposal! What if there's more of them?!"

"Wait, wait!" Jillian shouts, throwing her hands in the air. What is she doing? "It's not a real bomb! Don't call the police!"

The camp director pushes her way through the crowd that now contains all the Electron boys, who look equal parts scared, irritated, and impressed when they see Erin and Jillian standing there. She coughs into her elbow.

"What in God's name is going on?"

"Jillian built a bomb," Jackson says, pointing.

"It's not a real bomb," Jillian repeats.

"Everyone, get _back_ ," the director shouts.

It's utter mayhem.

It takes a good ten minutes for everyone to finally listen to Jillian about it not being a real bomb (although at this point, Erin's not convinced). The counsellors have evacuated all the campers to down by the lake, and someone _did_ call the police, because they show up, too.

Erin is terrified. Is this going to go on her permanent record? What if she can never get into any college ever because she's going to be the girl who tried to blow up a camp with her friend?

Jillian tries desperately to explain to the director and the police that it's a stink bomb. The police (who yes, brought two bomb disposal experts and a trained dog with them) demand to know every single thing that went into it, how she built it, whether or not there are more of them, what her intentions were…

"It was just a prank," Erin says, unable to watch Jillian being dragged through the coals alone. She may have been the one who designed, constructed, and detonated the bomb, but Erin was still a part of it the entire time.

The bomb squad contains the remains of the stink bomb and gets the flames put out while the police do a sweep of the rest of the camp with the dog to make sure they aren't lying about there not being any more bombs. After they finally announce that it's clear, the rest of the campers are allowed back to their bunks. They all give them glares as they pass by.

Erin, Jillian, Linda the director, and the police officers relocate to Linda's office in the main building, where the police fill out an official report on the whole 'incident,' as they keep referring to it.

Jillian looks at Erin in a way that makes it seem like she's thoroughly enjoying herself.

How could she possibly be _excited_ about having a permanent record?

After they fill out their report, they lecture the two of them for a _long_ time about the dangers of _any_ sort of explosives.

"You could have really injured someone, young lady," the one officer says to Jillian. "Maybe next time you'll consider the consequences before you mess around with things you don't understand."

Jillian nods. Erin hangs her head in shame.

When the police officers finally leave, Linda folds her hands and stares across her desk at them in a way that makes Erin feel small.

"It's very late, so I'm sending the two of you to bed to think about your actions. But tomorrow morning, I'm going to be calling your parents and telling them what happened, and then I'll decide whether or not to send you home early."

Erin shrinks back in horror at that. Send her home early?

"Don't punish Erin," Jillian says. "I'm the one who built it. Erin did nothing wrong."

Linda narrows her eyes. "Erin should've told a counsellor or myself about what you were doing. Erin is just as to blame."

Jillian quiets.

"You will report back here first thing tomorrow morning, understood?"

They both nod.

Soon, they're back out in the night, which has stilled considerably. Everyone is probably asleep again. It's dark and Erin doesn't know what happened to Jillian's flashlight, so they walk quickly.

"That was awesome," Jillian says, grinning at Erin as they scamper across the camp in the direction of Cabin 3.

"You nearly blew up the entire camp!" Erin hisses.

"It was a slightly bigger poof than I anticipated," Jillian concurs merrily.

* * *

Jillian doesn't forget about her kiss with Erin. She never forgets anything. Photographic memory, and all that. Although this time it's more like a movie than a picture, and it keeps replaying over and over in her mind.

That's what she thinks about as she tries to fall asleep. Not her 'actions.'

At the crack of dawn, they trudge back to Linda's office. She looks even more disapproving than she did last night, which Jillian didn't think was possible.

She says she called their parents. Erin turns as pale as a ghost. Then she says she doesn't see a point in sending them home early when there's only a week left.

They both relax at that.

Except then she says that they have to be on kitchen cleanup duty for the rest of camp, and what's worse— _much_ worse—they aren't allowed to work on their robot anymore. They're forbidden from entering the showcase and contest. The Ghost Lizard will never see the light of day. That breaks Jillian's heart more than anything.

They're dismissed to the mess hall for breakfast, where they get so many dirty looks that Jillian just has to say something.

"What's wrong? You look like we tried to blow you up," she calls cheerfully.

Erin elbows her, hard.

A few days later, it's Erin's birthday. Jillian risks all her freedom to break into the kitchen after hours and make her a cake in the microwave. When Erin finds out, she's a little mad, but she seems happy. They sit side by side in Cabin 13 (even though they'll get in heaps of trouble if they're caught there) and swap a stolen fork back and forth to eat the cake right out of the mug Jillian made it in.

"Thank you," Erin says.

"It's not every day you turn thirteen," Jillian says. "Gotta celebrate it right."

"I think this is the first birthday I've spent with a friend since I was seven," Erin says.

Jillian is quiet for a moment. "Then it's a good thing we're together."

Erin lets the fork stand up in the mug and pulls her knees up to her chest. Jillian sets the mug on the floor.

"What's wrong?"

"I'm just sad."

"About your birthday?"

"No…about camp ending. I have to go back to school in a few weeks. Without you."

Jillian picks at the scabs on her shins from the maple syrup incident. "I know."

"Why can't you beg your mom to let you come back to school?"

Jillian shrugs. "I've already learned stuff from high school. Middle school would be boring."

Erin twists so she's facing Jillian completely and wraps her fingers around Jillian's forearm, gripping tightly. "But we'd be together."

Jillian swallows. "I know. I'm sorry, Erin. I can't."

Erin slumps back into place in defeat, releasing Jillian's arm. "It's okay."

"Hey," Jillian says, desperate to cheer her up, "for the next month you're _two_ years older than me. That's gotta feel awesome."

Erin laughs. "That's not how time works. I'm only a year and one month older than you and that never changes."

"You know what I meeaaan."

"It's kinda cool that the universe is billions of years old and we were born only a year and one month apart."

"Well when you put it that way, that's no time at all."

"Exactly."

"Science is cool," Jillian says with a grin.

* * *

Camp draws to a close.

Erin does go out kayaking with Teddy, and they kiss down by the lake afterwards. His lips aren't as soft as Jillian's were, and he's so slobbery that she has to wipe her mouth off with the bottom of her shirt. It's not very nice at all. She wishes she hadn't done it. She doesn't know why she was so excited at the prospect. It just ended up a letdown.

She never tells Jillian about it, and Jillian never asks.

The robot showcase comes and goes, and first place goes to Jackson and his partner Heng.

"Ours would've won," Jillian says in Erin's ear, crossing her arms with an irritated look on her face. Erin's pretty sure she's right.

They spend their last night together washing dishes in the kitchen while the rest of the campers are at the goodbye bonfire. Erin doesn't mind much. They talk and laugh and throw soapy water at each other and Erin realizes just how much she's going to miss Jillian's company.

"I'm going to miss you," she says.

"I'm gonna miss you too," Jillian says sadly. "What if we meet up at the library again like we used to?"

"That's too hit and miss," Erin says. "Can't you just call me?"

"Right. Phone book."

Erin laughs. "I'll give you my phone number just to be extra sure you have it."

They finally finish the dishes and get to go outside for the last twenty minutes of the bonfire. They each get a few final s'mores in. Jillian cooks and eats a record fifteen by shoving five marshmallows on her stick at the same time.

"Efficiency," she says, and winks at Erin.

Erin rolls her eyes and licks melted marshmallow from her fingers.

The next day, they pack up their bags slowly, trying to prolong their departure. They don't say much. Their robotics counsellor finds them and gives them their incomplete robot and says he convinced Linda to let them take it home.

Jillian's whole face lights up as she takes it and cradles it in her arms like a baby.

"You can keep it," Erin says. "You built it."

"You mean it?"

"Yes."

"I'll keep working on it," Jillian promises, her eyes shining a little.

They walk up to Cabin 13 one last time to say goodbye to it. Jillian pulls out her Swiss Army knife and carves _GG & RJ WERE HERE _into one of the trees outside the abandoned cabin.

"Was that a present from Mark?" Erin asks as she watches her do it. She doesn't remember Jillian having a Swiss Army knife back when they were in school together.

Jillian shakes her head, her tongue poking out between her lips as she concentrates. "My mom gave it to me. She said I can do anything in the whole world as long as I have the right tools."

"That's really nice," Erin says, although it makes her heart hurt a little, too. What she wouldn't give to get thoughtful presents from her mother. She's always been a little jealous of Jillian's relationship with her mom.

When the carving is done and Jillian is admiring her work, Erin hears a soft 'click' noise.

"What was that?" she says. Was it the ghost?

"Photographic memory," Jillian murmurs.

"Oh," Erin says. She knows what that means—Jillian is making sure she'll never forget.

They go back to Cabin 3 and say goodbye to the rest of the Protons, who have forgiven them for the bomb incident. The rest of the camp hasn't, but the Protons know it was for the war.

Then Erin's dragging her suitcase across the camp for the last time while Jillian walks beside her with her duffle bag swinging and the robot tucked under her arm. Erin doesn't know where Teddy is, but she doesn't really care at all about saying goodbye to him. He's just a boy.

She does care about Jillian.

They only go as far as the short path that goes to the parking lot. It's unspoken that they both don't want to go all the way there and have their parents intruding on their goodbye. Especially when Erin knows hers will be furious about the bomb.

They stand there and stare at each other. Jillian drops her duffle bag to the ground and dust kicks up. Erin coughs and watches Jillian's lip wobble as she sets the robot down on top of the duffle bag.

"You'll call me?" Erin asks, anxious already.

Jillian nods like a bobblehead. "Every day."

Erin laughs but a few tears well up in her eyes. "That's a lot."

"Don't care," Jillian says.

Erin steps forward and wraps her arms all the way around Jillian, pulling her into the tightest hug ever. Jillian grips her back with just as much intensity.

"I'm gonna miss you so much," Jillian mumbles, her voice muffled by Erin's shirt.

Erin's really crying now. "I'm going to miss you more."

She clings onto Jillian, not wanting to release her because she knows that once she does, they'll have to go down that path to the parking lot and part ways.

She knows it's inevitable, though.

Finally, they break apart and Erin sees that Jillian's face is wet, too. She rubs at her eyes with the back of her hand and picks up the robot and her duffle bag again. Erin grabs the handle of her suitcase and sniffles.

"So this is it, then," Jillian says. "Um…I just wanna say that I'm really, really happy we both ended up at camp together. It wouldn't have been nearly as awesome without you here. And I'm justreallyhappywe'refriendsagain."

Erin sniffles again and nods. "Me too. I wish we never had to leave."

"You think you're going to come back next summer?"

Erin thinks about her parents, how much she had to beg them to let her come this year, how angry they'll be about the bomb. "I don't think my parents will let me," she admits.

Jillian looks crestfallen. "Oh."

"We'll talk on the phone though, right? Maybe we can make plans to meet up."

"Right. Definitely," Jillian says. "Okay." She puffs her cheeks and blows out loudly. "It's time to go."

Erin's grip on her suitcase handle tightens. "I know."

Jillian hugs her again, just a quick one-armed one this time. "Bye, GG."

"Bye, RJ."

With that, they walk down the path, and once they get to the parking lot they split up and walk in opposite directions. Erin resists the urge to look back over her shoulder.

When gets to her car, her mom and dad are standing outside it, looking angry. Her dad snatches her suitcase and throws it in the truck.

"You are in enormous trouble, young lady," he snaps.

Erin listens to them yell at her for the entire drive back to Battle Creek, not really hearing any of it at all. She's thinking about Jillian.

She misses her so much already. It's like she's suddenly missing an arm or leg, but it still hurts. She read about that one time—when people actually _do_ lose an arm or leg and it still hurts where it used to be even though there's nothing there at all anymore. It's called 'phantom pain.'

That's ironic.

She almost laughs out loud at her joke and makes a note to tell Jillian because she'll appreciate it, then remembers a second later that Jillian's gone. She'll just have to tell her over the phone.

Except when they get home, the first thing her parents say is that she's grounded.

"No leaving the house except for school, and your phone privileges have been revoked," her mother says. Then, under her breath and snidely, adds, "Not that you have any friends to call."

No phone? But what about Jillian?

Erin goes up to her room and all she can do is cry. And cry some more.

Somewhere amidst the tears, she digs through her bottom dresser drawer until she finds the smooth edge of a file folder that she hid there two years ago. She pulls it out and rips up the tape holding down the small lizard pin that Jillian once gave her. She clutches it in her fist childishly and opens the folder to find the Ghost Girl and Reptilian Jillian comic, then she spends the rest of the day in bed reading it and rereading it until she has it memorized word for word, tracing her finger over the drawings and trying to absorb some of the superheroes' butt-kicking powers.

That evening, the phone rings and she hears her mom answer it.

"Hello, Gilbert residence. … Who? … Well, you can't talk to her. She's banned from the phone indefinitely. Don't call here again."

Erin's heart breaks all over again.

Jillian doesn't call every day like she promised she would. She never calls the house again. Not once.


	3. iii

iii.

Jillian thinks about Erin every day.

She thinks about her at home alone with her mean parents who won't let her use the phone. She thinks about her going to school with mean kids who say nasty things and beat her up. She wishes desperately she was there to protect her, to shield her. Not that Erin can't protect herself…they're just both stronger when they're together.

She also thinks about what it was like kissing Erin, and wonders if she'll ever get to do it again.

On her twelfth birthday, a show called the X-Files premieres and she falls in love with it instantly. She wonders if Erin's watching it, too. It seems like a show that Erin would love. She wishes she could talk about it with her, share all her theories. She knows Erin would have some excellent theories of her own.

Jillian's homeschooling continues. Her math and science tutors are impressed with her progress. Her mom is so proud of her. Even though she's learning extremely advanced subjects, they tell her they're pacing her so she doesn't end up going off to college at thirteen or something, like one of those child geniuses. Well, she supposes she _is_ one of those child geniuses, but still.

Her, her mom, and Mark move out of the apartment that she grew up in and into a house. A real house, in a cul-de-sac in the suburbs. She doesn't mind as much as she thought she would. Her room is much bigger in the house, and she's got a section of the garage all to herself as a workshop. She works on the robot, like she promised. She gets it completely functional and watches it hover a few feet off the ground in the driveway and zap a tin can with its laser mouth. She wishes Erin were here to see it.

When she turns thirteen, the year she would've been entering high school with Erin, she thinks about her some more and hopes that high school will be better for her than elementary and middle were. For the millionth time, she wishes she was there with her.

Then something happens that completely takes her mind off Erin.

Her mom and Mark tell her they're having a baby. A _baby._

Jillian is a teenager, and she's going to have a baby sibling. They tell her on Christmas, like it's a present.

She feels like a dumb little kid for this, but she cries about it. She's never been the kind of only child who desperately wishes for a sibling. It was always her and her mom, until it wasn't.

But sharing her mom's love with Mark isn't that hard. It's a different kind of love, and she always knew that Mark couldn't change their relationship. But this? A baby? Definitely can.

Her mom is going to love the baby in the same way that she loves Jillian. Her love is going to be _split_ between them.

She doesn't cry in _front_ of them. But she does cry.

Then she gets over it.

Her mom has a little boy in July, names him Luke, and Jillian suddenly has a baby brother.

The first time she holds him, he wraps his fist in a death grip around her finger. "The force is strong with this one," she says.

* * *

High school is mildly better than middle school was. Everyone still calls Erin Ghost Girl, because apparently that nickname is _never_ going to leave her alone, but that's pretty much the worst of it. The best part of high school is that there's way more to learn. More math, more science, electives, and she even takes Spanish, although she has a really hard time with it. She throws herself into her studies, determined to graduate with a 4.0 GPA.

She gets a part-time job waitressing, too, mostly so she can spend as many hours out of the house as possible. Her parents calmed down a long time ago about the science camp bomb scare, but they're still pretty unpleasant to be around.

One day, she's taking down a customer's order when she _swears_ she sees Jillian on the other side of the street from the restaurant. For a few moments, she seriously considers bolting outside to find out, even though she'd probably get fired.

She completely misses half the order, and has to get the customer to repeat it all. By the time she looks up again, the person who was maybe Jillian is gone.

She tells herself that she needs to stop looking for her. She needs to forget about her. She tries to recapture her old 'don't need anyone' attitude.

She's made it through almost five years of school completely alone, and that doesn't even include the time before she met Jillian. She can do this.

Every once in a while, someone will throw a crumpled up ball of paper at her back in class, or graffiti her locker, or do something else that hurts just a _bit_ more than being called Ghost Girl, and she reacts by shrinking herself even smaller, trying to make herself even more invisible. The Erin she was at camp, the Erin who helps build robots and bombs, who kisses boys by lakes, who breaks rules and stays up late and has fun, that Erin can't exist anymore. That's just not who she is in school. She's not Ghost Girl the superhero, she's Ghost Girl the crazy loser. That's who she is without Jillian.

She keeps her head down. She can almost tune everyone out. She gets really good at it.

The summer she turns sixteen, she works full time and gets her provisional driver's license. For her birthday, her grandmother—on the cusp of being moved into a home permanently—gives Erin her old car. Erin doesn't know much about it, other than the fact that it's grey and old (much like the woman who gave it to her), but it runs. And it's free.

That's the best kind of car, in her opinion.

Suddenly, Erin has even more freedom, and can take herself to-and-from work without relying on her parents at all. It's liberating.

Sometimes she goes for long drives around town by herself, and she tells herself she isn't _looking_ , not really.

(She totally is).

She starts her junior year with lower expectations than ever. _Only two more years_ , she repeats to herself over and over. Then she can get away from all this, away from these kids who she's grown up with, who know too much about her past. Soon, she'll be at college, where _nobody_ will ever know about Ghost Girl. Nobody will ever know that she once saw a ghost.

On her first day, she sits down in AP Physics at the very back of the classroom, where nobody will throw stuff at the back of her head. This is a strategy she's learned over the years. It helps a lot if you can see what's coming at you so you can duck out of the way.

For example, right now what's coming at her is a girl who she's never seen before, with brown hair and glasses, a black cardigan, and a messenger bag slung across her chest.

Erin tries to give a warning with her eyes, a mental _don't sit down, don't sit down_ , but the girl sits on the stool next to her anyway.

"Hi!" she says. "I'm Abby. I'm new here."

"Erin," Erin mutters. She busies herself by lining up three pens beside her notebook and hopes the girl will get the hint.

"Is that a briefcase?"

Erin's head snaps up and she glares defensively. "Leave me alone." She likes the briefcase. It's brown leather, pliable but sturdy. She bought it for herself, one of the few purchases she's made with her paychecks. She's saving for college.

"Jesus," the girl says, holding up her hands. "Who peed in your Cheerios this morning? It was just a question."

"Listen," Erin says, "if you're looking for someone to be your friend and show you around, or whatever, I'm not that person. Okay?"

"Who says I want to be friends with _you?_ " the girl says. "I don't forge friendships with arrogant buttwads."

Good. Erin doesn't need friends. Friendships just end in sadness, in her experience.

"Hey, Ghost Girl, see any ghosts over the summer?"

Erin doesn't know exactly who says it. She doesn't even look up from her notebook, just flips off the general direction that the voice came from.

"You've seen a ghost?" the girl says, suddenly alert and almost eager-sounding.

"No," Erin says.

"You have, haven't you?"

"Leave me alone," Erin repeats.

"What did it look like? What class was it? Colour, shape, sounds, smells? Did it ectoproject?"

What the hell is she going on about?

"Ectoproject?" Erin says despite herself.

The girl mimes barfing.

Erin watches her for a few seconds. "You're making fun of me," she says finally.

"I'm not," the girl says. "I happen to be a paranormal enthusiast, and if you've actually seen a ghost, I want to hear about it."

Erin eyes her warily. Paranormal enthusiast?

Erin's days of wanting to know more about ghosts, to prove their existence, are long behind her. Thinking about ghosts just reminds her of Jillian and the days they spent discussing them in elementary school. The days they spent camped out in Cabin 13, waiting for a sign of paranormal activity.

She shakes those thoughts from her head.

"I don't like talking about it," she says.

The girl exhales loudly. "Oh, come _on._ That's not fair. I happen to sit beside someone who's had a first-hand spectral encounter, and now you're saying you're not going to tell me about it? Ugh."

She sounds sincerely disappointed.

"Maybe…maybe I could," Erin says before she can think it through. "Not here, though."

The girl perks up again. "At lunch, maybe?"

Erin nods slowly. "Okay." She considers the girl for another moment or two. "What did you say your name was, again?"

"Abby. Abby Yates."

Erin sticks out her hand for a shake. "Nice to meet you, Abby Yates."

"Likewise, arrogant buttwad." She says that with a smile this time.

Erin keeps her promise and tells Abby about the ghost at lunch. Abby sits captivated through the story, interjecting question after question, and even takes some notes in a small purple notebook she gets from her bag.

They have more classes together. Most of them, actually. It's impossible not to talk to her when she's always around. Every day, they talk more and more. Usually about the ghost.

They hang out at lunchtimes, too. They eat their packed lunches in Erin's car, where they can talk louder about ghosts without worrying that the other students will overhear.

Then their conversations expand beyond ghosts. More specifically: the X-Files. Abby's just a big of a fan as Erin is. They discuss (read: argue about) their respective theories at length, both about the plausibility of the things that happen in the show _and_ about the budding romance of Mulder and Scully.

(Abby doesn't see it. Erin's adamant that it's happening. They argue for weeks).

Before Erin really knows what's happening, she's found another friend.

Abby's nothing like Jillian. She's louder. More normal. More headstrong. More likely to rub people the wrong way. While Jillian dealt with bullies by drawing a comic where they defeated them, Abby will straight-up yell at people until they cut it out.

Erin doesn't mean to compare them, but she can't help it. When you've only ever had two real friends in your life, it's hard not to put them side by side like the world's most judgmental 'spot the differences' game.

Her interest in ghosts resurfaces. It's hard not to absorb Abby's enthusiasm about them. They do research together, devour every book they can find on the paranormal. They cross-check and make notes in Abby's purple notebook.

"Half this stuff isn't even real science," Erin says in frustration one lunch.

Abby looks over from the passenger seat of Erin's car, where she's got her feet up on the dashboard. "We could do better."

"We _should_ do better," Erin says. "I think we could prove the existence of the paranormal so long as we do real research and science."

"I agree," Abby says. "We need to find a ghost, though. That's what we need to do."

That's how they start hanging out outside of school. They drive and check out supposed haunted sites in Battle Creek, but they don't find anything.

Then, Abby starts inviting Erin over to her house.

It's weird. She hasn't been over to a friend's house since she was seven.

They watch X-Files together, both new episodes and old ones that Abby's recorded. They look back over details they may have missed before to bulk out their theories. Erin tries to compile evidence for the Mulder and Scully romance front, but Abby still doesn't see it.

(Later, she finds out that Abby doesn't really understand romance, and that explains a lot).

They spend all their time together. Erin almost wants to quit her job just so she can spend more time with Abby, but she doesn't.

They have sleepovers where they stay up all night doing ghost research and talking about school and life. Abby talks about her childhood and her family. Erin learns that Abby's mom has a doctorate in chemical physics, and they moved from Rochester to Battle Creek so she could work fortifying cereal with vitamins and minerals. Erin thinks that's _so_ cool.

She meets Dr. Yates, and is a little star struck. She's really nice, though. She's exactly like the mom Erin wants, and she secretly wishes the Yateses would adopt her. Abby's dad is a cheery fellow, a pharmacist, who cracks a lot of jokes and makes sure they always have enough snacks.

It feels like home.

Erin isn't used to this, this kind of friendship. It feels normal. Safe. Secure. The kind of friendship she reads about in books. It's not like her wacky, unconventional friendship with Jillian. Sure, it's still a little weird (she's pretty sure friendships in books don't involve so much talk of the paranormal), but at least Abby is actually _around_ and Erin doesn't have to worry about her up and leaving. Abby is very direct about stuff and would tell her first.

They decide to start a paranormal investigation club at school, just in case there are others who share their interests and want to help with their research. They dub it the Metaphysical Examination Society and meet every lunch hour at a table in the cafeteria so that other people can join them if they want.

(Nobody does, but they keep meeting anyway).

They talk about conducting real paranormal investigations and stakeouts, but it's hard when you don't have a lot of money to spend on fancy equipment.

Abby sighs. "I wish I knew how to build this kind of thing. We would barely have to fork over any cash if we made them ourselves."

Erin almost says that she knows someone who would _definitely_ be able to build them the equipment they need, but she bites her tongue. Sure, Jillian would probably be a tremendous help, but she's also not _here_ , so what's the point in saying anything?

The two of them talk about maybe going to the same college so they can have access to more materials and can really give their research the kick that it needs. Erin tries to contain her excitement about the possibility.

Everything is falling into place perfectly.

She can almost, _almost_ , forget that a part of her still feels missing.

* * *

It's the summer of Jillian's fifteenth year, a few days before Luke's second birthday, and her mom drags her out on a last-minute errand to get stuff for his party.

She doesn't mind that much. She likes going out on drives, and she _really_ likes alone time with her mom. It rarely happens anymore, not since Luke was born. She loves the kid, but he sure is an attention suck.

They drive along the highway and the sun beats down on Jillian through the windshield. She lets her hand trail out the open window while wind blows a chunk of her hair in her mouth.

 _I'll Be Missing You_ is playing on the radio. It's been playing on the radio all summer. Jillian sings along. She knows all the lyrics by now.

"You like this song?" her mom asks, looking over at her from the driver's seat with a smile.

"Everyone likes this song," Jillian replies.

She knows the song is about someone dying, but it kinda makes her think of Erin when she hears it. Not all the lyrics, just some of them. That's probably still pretty morbid, but she can't help it.

"It's so sad, don't you think?" her mom says.

"The song?"

"No, that boy dying. The one who the song is about. He was so young."

Jillian is about to respond to that when she sees something out of the corner of her eye that turns her blood cold.

It's a car on the other side of the highway, swerving all the way into their lane, barreling right at them.

Jillian doesn't have enough time to shout, to warn her mom, because at that moment the car collides right into the red '82 Chevy C10 that Jillian loves so much and there's a deafening crunch and the sound of glass shattering and Jillian screams too late as she's thrown hard against her seat and her vision goes black around the edges and she feels pain, pain, so much pain, and when she inhales it feels like she's being stabbed and she smells smoke and fire and something wet runs down her face and into her mouth and it tastes like metal and that _song_ is still playing on the radio and in her speckling vision she sees her mom slumped over the steering wheel and beside her on the dashboard Marge the hula girl is still dancing, so Jillian stretches her hand and rips her from her duct tape confines and her fingers close around her tiny plastic body and she holds her tightly in her fist and the black spots get bigger and her eyelids get heavier and she lets them close and…

She sleeps.

 _Just the two of us forever, baby._

* * *

Erin is sitting on Abby's couch and watching a news report about a bad accident on the highway. They could even hear the sirens going by about a half hour ago.

 _"_ _Traffic is still backed up in both directions following a severe multi-vehicle crash earlier this afternoon."_

Abby steps back into the living room balancing a large bowl of popcorn and two bottles of Coke.

"What the hell are you watching the news for?"

"Dunno," Erin murmurs.

 _"_ _There have been two confirmed fatalities so far."_

"Ugh, that's depressing. Just turn it off. I told you to get the movie ready."

" _There are reports that another occupant of one of the cars was taken to the hospital with life-threatening injuries, but not much is known about—"_

Erin shuts off the news while Abby slides the movie into her VCR player, then comes and sits next to Erin, wedging the bowl of popcorn between them.

Erin doesn't pay much attention to the movie. She's distracted, and she's not really sure why. She just has this weird, uneasy feeling like something is wrong, but she can't for the life of her figure out what it might be.

* * *

Jillian wakes up.

She wakes up, and she's in the hospital, and that means she's alive. There's a steady beeping noise and an IV line in her hand and a tube down her throat and her vision is blurry but at least it isn't black.

She lifts her head and the room spins. She drops it back against the pillow.

Everything hurts.

There's a flurry of motion and through her blurry vision she sees Mark leaning over her.

"Jillian? Jillian?"

She wants to respond, but she can't because the tube in her throat. She blinks, and her vision clears a bit.

"I'm going to call a nurse," Mark says.

It's exhausting keeping her eyes open. She closes them again.

When she opens her eyes again, the room is dark, and for a second she thinks her vision has gone black again.

She hears the heart rate monitor beeps quicken as panic chokes through her, and then the light turns on and she realizes that it's just nighttime now. The beeping slows back down. A whole hoard of nurses and doctors surround the bed and behind them, she sees Mark again.

"Jillian?" one of the doctors says. "Do you know where you are?"

She manages the tiniest nod possible.

"You were in a car accident Tuesday afternoon," the doctor says.

 _A crunch of metal. The smell of fire._

"You sustained multiple injuries. Internal bleeding, a dislocated shoulder, punctured lung, broken wrist, concussion, multiple cuts and lacerations…" the doctor continues to list Jillian's injuries but she's not listening anymore.

 _Her mom's body wilting over the steering wheel._

She waits until the doctor stops talking. Waits until a nurse has measured her vitals. Waits until everyone has cleared.

Mark stands at the foot of the bed.

If there wasn't a fucking tube down Jillian's throat, she would've already asked the question.

But there is a tube.

And there's also Mark's face.

He steps closer, comes to sit down in a chair right beside the bed. His hand hesitates over her for a few seconds, then very gently brushes her hair off her face.

"You were in surgery for a long time," he says. She's never heard his voice sound so small, so vulnerable. "You've been asleep for days. They didn't know—" He inhales sharply. His eyes are watery. "I've been here with you the whole time. Luke is with my mother."

Jillian's eyes well up at the word. _Tell me_ , she wants to scream.

He wraps his hand loosely around her fingers, holding her hand without disrupting the IV. "I'm so glad you're going to be okay. Oh, Jillian, I was so scared for you. So scared." His voice is hoarse like he's been crying a lot.

She blinks. Tears spill over from her eyes and track down her cheek.

 _Please tell me_.

He crumples. "I'm sorry, Jillian. I'm so sorry." His voice breaks on the word.

He never says it.

He doesn't have to.

She knows.

* * *

Erin is cleaning up a table at work. She gathers the departed customer's plate, his cutlery, his used napkins. She pockets the tip. She reaches for the newspaper he left behind. It's open to the obituaries.

She happens to see a name.

 _Kathleen (Kathy) Holtzmann_

 _November 7, 1965 – July 15, 1997_

 _A loving mother and wife, Kathy_

 _made everyone's lives better simply_

 _by being in them. Always smiling,_

 _she was our sunshine. Kathy is survived_

 _by her husband, Mark, and her two_

 _children, Jillian (15) and Luke (2)._

 _Never forgotten._

Erin's heart stops. She feels numb.

July 15th. That was the day of that bad car accident.

Erin runs her fingers along the words. She reads the words _survived by her two children_ over and over again. Jillian has a brother?

Jillian's mom is dead.

The thought punches a hole through Erin's gut. She can only imagine the anguish Jillian is feeling right now. She loved her mom so much.

Erin desperately wishes the obituary said something about a service. She would go. She would go in a heartbeat.

But she doesn't know what to do. What she _can_ do.

She tears out the obituary and shoves it in the pocket of her apron.

When she gets home from work, she flips through the phone book desperately.

There's no listing under Holtzmann.

It's probably under Mark's last name, but she doesn't know what it is.

She throws the phone book at the wall.

* * *

Jillian spends the rest of the summer first in the hospital, then in physical therapy, then locked in her bedroom.

Mark buys her a TV for her room and she sits in her bed, wrapped in blankets even though it's summer and it's sweltering, and she watches X-Files all day every day. She works her way through the tall stack of VHS tapes labeled by episode that she's recorded. She watches them over and over and over until she can recite every line by memory, could probably act them out down to the facial expressions.

She tapes Marge to the top of the TV, where she wobbles uneasily. Sometimes she watches Marge instead of the TV. The EMTs saved her, made sure she was put with the rest of Jillian's stuff when she was brought in. Marge is all she has left of the red '82 Chevy C10. She feels like throwing up every time she sees her, but she can't look away.

Jillian barely moves. Barely leaves her room except to go to the bathroom. Mark brings her food and sometimes she eats it but most times she doesn't. She only leaves the house for physical therapy appointments and doctor's appointments.

She takes a Sharpie to the cast on her broken wrist. Colours the whole thing black. The first Sharpie runs out and she has to get another one to finish.

Near the end of August, Mark comes into her room and sits in her desk chair.

"Can you pause that?"

Jillian lifts the remote and pauses. The screen freezes on Mulder and Scully digging up a grave. Marge bobbles.

"We need to talk about September," Mark says.

"What about it?" She stares out her window. A kid rides past on a bike.

"I think you should go back to school."

She looks at him. Blinks. "What do you mean, back to school?"

"Back to school. High school."

She laughs, because obviously he's joking.

"I'm serious, Jillian."

"I haven't been to school in seven years," she says, "and you want me to go back _now?_ "

"Yes, I do."

"No."

"This isn't a negotiation, Jillian."

"I've already learned everything that I'd be taught. _More._ Hell, I already have all my requirements to graduate as is."

"It's not about the academics. It's about this." He gestures at her. "This isn't good for you. You can't isolate yourself forever. I'm letting you do it right now because you're grieving, but at some point, you need to join the world of the living again."

She laughs harshly. "Poor choice of words, my guy."

"No, it's not. You're alive, Jillian. Life doesn't stop just because she's gone. She wouldn't have wa—"

"Don't you _dare_ say that this isn't what she would've wanted. You don't know what she wanted. And it doesn't _matter_ what she'd want, because she's _dead_."

Mark flinches. "I'm sorry, but I'm putting my foot down. You're starting at Hoover High in a few weeks. You need to be around people again. It's only a year. That's it. One year. Then you can graduate and lock yourself in a room for the rest of your life if you really want. Okay?"

Hoover High. That registers dimly.

The high school Erin was going to go to. She wonders if Erin's still there.

Jillian is quiet for a few minutes.

"Okay," she says finally.

She spends the next few weeks watching more X-Files and trying to wrap her head around the fact that she might see Erin again. A light at the end of a very long and very bleak tunnel. What should she say to her? Will she look different? Will she have changed? It's been four years. Four years is a long time.

On her first day, she selects her outfit with care. Baggy black cargo pants, a faded Queen t-shirt that belonged to her mom, a men's waistcoat that she leaves unbuttoned, and a brown trench coat that she calls her Scully Coat.

She kisses Luke on the top of his head and accepts a quick hug from Mark, then hoists her patchwork bag over her shoulder. She gets her old bike from the garage, the one she bought at a yard sale for $5 and was told didn't work, and pedals off in the direction of the school with her coat flapping in the wind behind her. She doesn't go in cars anymore.

When she gets to the school, she locks up her bike and stares up at the building, taking a few deep breaths. She has no idea what to expect. She's about to enter her senior year of high school at only fifteen, and she hasn't set foot in a public school since the fifth grade. Seems like a recipe for disaster. Her wrist twinges. It always hurts now when she gets anxious.

Inside, she finds the guidance office, where she's given a schedule and pointed in the right direction.

She has AP Calculus first. If there was a class that Erin would be in with her, that would be it.

She finds the room easily and hovers outside the door for a few seconds. A couple students slip past her and give her weird looks.

Finally, she steps inside.

She scans the room, and sees her immediately. How could she not?

She's there in the back row of desks, and she looks like the same old Erin, just bigger and older. Her hair is the same as it always was. Her face is a little leaner than it used to be. Her eyes, her little swooping nose, they're the same as she remembers.

Jillian's breath hitches in her throat. She's so beautiful.

Then she notices the girl Erin is sitting beside. Notices the way they're sitting with their heads bent together over a thick book. The girl says something, and Erin laughs. Her laugh carries across the classroom, floats through Jillian's ears, and turns her brain to static.

Erin's moved on.

Her stomach bottoms out.

* * *

Erin is waiting for AP Calc to start and discussing _Kemp's Spectral Field Guide_ with Abby when there's movement to her left.

A low, familiar voice says, "This seat taken?"

She freezes. Looks up slowly.

It's her.

It's really her.

Erin is out of her chair is a second flat and throws her arms around Jillian, clinging onto her tightly.

"Oh my God," she says. "Oh my God, it's you."

Jillian chuckles and returns the hug, gripping just as tightly. "It's me."

Erin doesn't want to let go for fear that Jillian will somehow disappear like an apparition. She squeezes tighter.

"Oof. Erin, could you—I was in a car accident a few months ago and I'm still—"

Erin releases her at once and steps back. "Oh my God. You were…you were in the car too?"

Jillian flinches. Erin studies her. The evidence is all there. She hadn't noticed at first, but her face and neck are covered with little scars and one bigger one up on her forehead. Her face is thin, her cheekbones prominent. The bags under her eyes are practically the colour of plums. Erin wonders if she's been sleeping at all. Or eating.

"I didn't know…that you knew," Jillian says, staring at the floor.

"I saw the—um, I saw the paper." Erin can't bring herself to say the word obituary. She reaches out and takes Jillian's hands in hers. "I'm so sorry, Jillian. I'm so, so sorry. I wish I had been there for you." Her voice breaks. She's not sure what else to say.

She sees tears gather in the corners of Jillian's eyes.

"What are you doing back in school?" Erin says quickly, to distract her.

Jillian shrugs and swipes at her eyes. The tears are already gone a second later, just like that. "Mark made me. Says I need to be around people, because I haven't really been, since…"

Erin swallows and squeezes her hands. "I can't believe you're here. For the whole year?"

"For the whole year," Jillian confirms. "I'll graduate with you. Billions of years, and we'll get to graduate from the same school at the same time."

Erin feels her eyes well up a bit, too. She knows what Jillian is talking about right away.

There's a cough behind her.

 _Abby_. She almost forgot about Abby. Erin looks down at her, takes in her confused expression, then looks back at Jillian, whose own face is an on-edge mask, guarded. That's new.

"Um, Jillian, this is Abby Yates. Abby, this is my friend, Jillian."

Abby stands and extends a hand past Erin. "Nice to meet you."

Jillian shakes it, her unease evident. "How long have you known each other?"

Erin glances at Abby. "Abby transferred here last year."

"Oh. Erin and I have been friends since the fourth grade," Jillian says to Abby, her voice hard and almost territorial. Is she jealous of Abby?

That stings, a little. She doesn't have any right to be jealous. She's the one who exited Erin's life, not the other way around.

Then she remembers that Jillian's mom just died less than two months ago, so Erin should probably cut her some slack.

"I like your coat," Abby says. "It reminds me of—"

"Scully's," Jillian finishes at the same time that Abby does.

The corner of Jillian's mouth twitches up. "You watch the X-Files?"

Erin and Abby exchange an eager look. "Watch?" Erin says. "Try obsess over. We've seen every single episode. Multiple times."

"Betcha I've seen them more," Jillian says.

"Abby's really into the paranormal," Erin says, starting to get excited. "We started a club called the Metaphysical Examination Society here at school."

"Cool," Jillian says, hooking her bag over the back of her chair and taking a seat in the spot beside Erin. "How many members are there?"

Erin sits back down too, and Abby follows. They exchange a glance. "Just two. Maybe three?" Erin tilts her head hopefully.

Jillian smiles, and it doesn't have the spark of her old smiles, but it's a relief to see regardless. "Definitely three."

* * *

When she's with Erin, the hole in Jillian's heart doesn't feel as big. She doesn't forget—she never forgets—but it's easier to get through the days.

It takes her a few days, but she warms up to Abby. She seems pretty cool, and Jillian can see why Erin is friends with her. They let her read all their pages and pages of notes about the paranormal. They've done a staggering amount of research in the year that they've known each other.

They show Jillian the notes they have about equipment they want to buy but can't afford. EMF meters. Geiger counters.

"I might be able to help," she says, even though she hasn't built anything in months. "I can try, at the very least."

They get very excited about that. She wonders if she made a mistake by promising that. How crushed will they be if she can't pull it off?

She turns sixteen, and Erin doesn't forget her birthday. She brings her a cupcake from home, neatly packed in a Tupperware container.

"It's no mug cake, but…" Erin says.

"It's perfect," Jillian says. "Thank you."

She has most of her classes with either Erin, Abby, or both of them. They spend every lunch hour together at a table in the cafeteria and conduct their club meetings. Nobody else joins them, but it's kind of better that way. They talk about how they need to do a stakeout of at least one supposedly haunted site in Battle Creek. Erin and Abby haven't been to one yet because without legit equipment, nobody is going to let a bunch of teenagers onto their property.

It's nice to throw herself into something headfirst. It keeps her occupied. Distracted. She has passion for something again.

Mark must be able to see the change in her. She's more animated. She leaves her room more than just for school. She eats and eats, making up for lost time.

Nightmares still keep her up every night, but she doesn't see those ever going away.

Erin comments on it one day. They're sitting outside in the corner of one of the fields, just like they used to. Their Spot. Abby's at the dentist today.

"Do you ever sleep, Jillian?" Erin mutters, stretching one hand so her fingertips gently graze the dark skin under Jillian's eyes.

"Sometimes."

"What keeps you awake?"

"Nightmares," Jillian grunts.

"Every night?"

Jillian nods. Every night. The same one.

 _A crunch of metal. The smell of fire._

She closes her eyes.

Erin's fingertips trail down to Jillian's cheek, linger there a second, then disappear. Jillian swallows.

"I had recurring nightmares, too," Erin says quietly. "After the ghost. I'm sorry."

Jillian opens her eyes. Erin looks sad, the way she always looks when anything about Jillian's mom or the accident comes up. Jillian appreciates that. Most people's faces just drip with pity, surface level sympathy. Erin always looks as though the topic is just as painful for her, like it hurts her deeply.

"Did they go away?"

"I, um…I saw someone. A doctor. She helped me talk about them, and then they stopped."

"You mean a shrink?"

Erin nods and looks at her hands, fiddling with them. "There was a lot of other stuff that she didn't help at all with, made worse actually, but that was one thing she really did help with."

Jillian scratches her arm. Mark has been nudging her to see someone, too.

"I dunno, GG," she says, the childhood nickname slipping from her lips before she can help it. "I don't forget things as easily as you."

Erin sighs. "I know. I know you don't."

* * *

It's strange, Erin thinks, how easily Jillian has fit back into her life. It's like no time has passed and nothing's changed, even though tons of time has passed and _everything's_ changed.

Well, not everything.

With every day that passes, she gets a little bit of the old Jillian back. Just glimmers of her here and there, moments where it seems like she's happy again, like she _might_ be happy again.

Then there's moments where Erin wonders if she's even the same person.

One day, the three of them are walking in the hallway and Jillian happens to bump shoulders with Carl Lund, one of the biggest assholes Erin's ever met.

He spins with his eyes flashing. "Watch where you're going, dyke," he spits.

His friends laugh.

When Erin catches a glimpse of Jillian's face, it's frozen in a mix of fear and defeat. Not an ounce of the anger that a younger Jillian would've had. Not a hint of a witty comeback escapes from her lips.

Luckily, Abby's got her covered.

"Hey, Carl," she calls, loud enough for the whole hall to hear, "my dad wanted me to tell you that your prescription came in for that cream. Don't worry, that weird rash on your balls will clear up in no time!"

He turns red. "Whatever, fatass." He turns and storms away.

"Original," Abby shouts after him.

Jillian still looks like she's going to cry, so they take her into the bathroom, out of view.

"Don't worry about that loser," Abby says. "He was just being a dick."

"Yeah," Erin says. "He says all sorts of crap. You just gotta ignore him." Erin knows because she's been on the receiving end for years now.

Jillian stares at the wall. "Yep."

"Seriously," Erin says. "Don't worry about what he said. Nobody else thinks that, okay?"

Jillian looks at her for a long moment, something buried in her eyes. "Okay."

Erin thinks about that look for a long time, and a seed of an idea gets planted deep in her gut. She mulls it over for months. It shouldn't matter, she knows it shouldn't matter, but it won't leave her alone.

She knows she could just ask Jillian, but she doesn't.

She doesn't know if she even wants to know the answer.

And she doesn't know _why_ she wouldn't want to know the answer.

* * *

Jillian doesn't forget about the incident with Carl Lund.

She thinks about it. A lot.

She remembers after her kiss with Erin in the woods, when she wondered to herself if she wanted to kiss other girls too, or just Erin. She told herself at the time that it was a problem for another day.

Now seems like a good time to tackle that problem.

She does research, a lot of it, like a good scientist. She doesn't have access to test subjects, but she rounds up every single one of her mom's old magazines, books, anything sitting around the house that has a photo of a woman (excluding anyone who's related to her, gross) and spreads them out on her bed. She flips through them all, studies them, uses her photographic memory to keep a log of how she reacts when she sees each woman.

Then she turns to the TV and does the same thing. She knows how she feels when she sees Scully, so that goes down as a data point. She flicks through channels and examines face after face.

She does the same thing with men, just for comparison.

Then she transitions into real-world research by cataloguing everyone she passes in the hallways at school.

By the end of her research, it seems like the results are leaning in one way, but she can't make any definite conclusions until she has experimental backing. The only problem is she doesn't know how to make that happen.

It's like ghost hunting. Awful hard to conduct real, credible research when you don't have the right tools.

At least she can try and build ghost hunting tools. She can't build people who are interested in her.

And building the ghost hunting tools isn't going spectacularly either. Erin and Abby swear they aren't disappointed at all.

The problem is that Jillian doesn't have the right parts. She can't just whip together a Geiger counter with the scrap metal she's collected in her workshop. She can't even find a book that'll tell her how to do it.

(Coincidentally, she'd also love it if there was a book that would tell her whether or not she likes women).

* * *

Their AP Physics teacher, Mr. Gannon, makes an announcement one day about the school's science fair that's happening in April.

"Guys, we have to enter! We can show the world all our research," Abby says as they exit the room after the bell goes.

Erin is uneasy about the prospect. Share their research? With the whole school? Who already thinks they're crazy?

"I don't know, Abby," she says.

"Come on, Erin. This is our chance to make people take us seriously! Plus, I bet entering will give us a boost when it's time for scholarships to be doled out."

All three of them applied for early admission to University of Michigan, among other schools, and all three of them heard back and got in. It's not definite yet, that they're all going, but it seems pretty likely.

Erin just knows that she wants to go wherever Jillian is going. Now that she's back in her life, she doesn't want to be apart from her again.

Abby wins her over with her scholarship argument, and soon they're all planning out their project at Abby's house. They have ages to put the project together, but they also have a lot of material to get through.

As they work to compile it all, it becomes increasingly evident how well they work together as a team. They each bring something to the table, and Erin has a flash of what it would be like if they worked on research together for the rest of their lives. They really could be the first ones to prove the existence of the paranormal if they put their brains together.

It doesn't take long after that for them to all accept their offers to U of M. They all seem to be feeling the same way about their potential as a team.

The next problem is deciding who gets to be roommates with each other and who has to room with a stranger. They put the options on slips of paper and draw out of a hat to make it fair.

Erin crosses her fingers as she withdraws her slip. She _really_ doesn't want to room with a stranger. She unfolds the piece of paper and sees the word _yes_ with a little smiley face that Jillian scrawled, which means she's got one of the spots. She breathes a sigh of relief.

She's not sure why, but she's hoping that Jillian will get the other spot. She adores Abby, she really does, but Jillian is the one who she _really_ wants to share her college experience with.

Abby draws next. She unfurls her paper and pouts, holding it out for them to see the _no_ and sad face.

Jillian looks at Erin with a grin. "Hey, roomie."

Erin tries to contain her excitement. "Sorry, Abby. You can hang out in our room as much as you want, okay?"

"Sure, sure." Abby doesn't actually sound that upset.

April approaches, and their project is looking good. Better than good. They're all so proud of it.

On the day of the science fair, Erin drives and picks up Abby, and they load the project into the back of the car. They meet Jillian at the school, and she helps them unload it and bring it inside to set it up.

The three of them stroll into the gym feeling professional yet _awesome_ in their matching black turtlenecks. It was Erin who suggested them. She thought a plain, neutral look would put the focus on the presentation itself.

On their way to their designated station, they pass by Carl Lund and a group of his friends, who have built a pair of robots to fight each other called Blade Face and Señor Pain. Blade Face appears to be made with parts from a power saw and has a claw hand to grab its opponent. Señor Pain, on the other hand, has a single arm holding a hatchet.

Jillian jabs her thumb at them as they walk by. "Amateur hour, am I right," she says out of the corner of her mouth so only Erin and Abby can hear her. They both laugh.

They set up their red poster board, which is covered with a series of sections and drawings about a billion different topics with a large ghost cut-out at the top that says: _The durable but not impenetrable barrier._

The largest of the sections has, written across the top: _A significant coupling may well exist between spectral and Standard Model particles—a total of twelve gauge bosons: the photon, three weak bosons, and eight gluons._ The rest of that section is completely covered in equations that Erin worked out that describe Lagrangian mechanics. They tried to explain all of it to Mr. Gannon one time, and he could barely follow along with their theories about the spectral ether.

Erin is pretty sure that not a single person in this room would be able to understand, actually.

The judging begins with some projects that are, frankly, uninspired and lame.

When it's time for the robot fight, the three of them abandon their station to go watch. They can't miss this absurdity, if only so they can make fun of it.

Carl's presentation is full of dramatics and music as the robots begin to battle. It seems like a close fight between the two, and for a while Señor Pain has the upper hand, but then Carl's esteemed Blade Face grabs hold of Señor Pain's hatchet, twists the robot, and in a grand finale of sparks, saws it in half. Carl throws his hands over his head triumphantly.

"My robot is _invincible!"_ he shouts.

Erin's eyes go to Jillian at the same time that Jillian's go to hers. Are they both thinking the same thing? Erin had forgotten all about the Ghost Lizard until now. Did Jillian get it working?

Jillian raises her eyebrow mischievously, and that seems like Erin's answer right there.

"You wanna bet on that, Lund?" Jillian says after the judges have moved onto the next project.

He smirks and crosses his arms. "Don't tell me that you _girls_ have built a robot. What are its powers? Putting on makeup?"

"First of all, you sexist dweeb," Abby starts, clearly getting riled up.

Jillian places a hand across her chest, holding her back. " _Actually_ , Carl, we _do_ have a robot. And it could kick your robot's ass."

"Now _that_ I'd love to see," Carl says with a laugh.

"Any time, any place," Jillian says confidently, crossing her arms to match his stance.

Is she really that confident? If Erin remembers correctly, the Ghost Lizard's only useful power was shooting lasers out its mouth. Is that any match for a saw blade?

"After school?" Carl says.

"Hamilton Park?" Jillian says.

"You're on."

Jillian smiles smugly. "Make sure to tell your friends."

Then she turns and pulls both Erin and Abby with her in the direction of their station.

"Do you really have a robot?" Abby asks.

"Sure do," Jillian replies proudly. "Erin and I built it, right Erin?"

"Jillian built it," Erin says. "I just wrote the code."

"Which works like a charm, by the way. Nicely done."

"Does it fly?"

"You better believe it."

"And the lasers?"

Jillian makes zapping noises. "Locked and loaded."

Abby whistles. "This I gotta see."

"In good time, Abigail. First: we got a science fair to win."

Erin's pretty sure they aren't going to win. When they reach their poster again, she looks it over.

"Guys, this is too complicated. Everyone's going to be bored. We'll never win."

"Not with that attitude," Jillian says.

"We need something else. Something to catch their attention."

All they have is a boombox with a tape of spooky noises playing.

"Hold on," Abby says, rummaging around in her bag. She pulls out another tape triumphantly.

"Is that…"

"Our dance!" Abby says gleefully.

Jillian looks back and forth between them. "What dance?"

"We choreographed this whole dance and rap number," Erin explains. "Over the summer."

"You? A rap?"

"Abby's the one who raps," Erin says.

Abby holds up the tape. "What do you think?"

Erin looks at Jillian and bites her lip.

"Hey," Jillian says, "don't worry about me. I can stay out of your way. Or just do some freestyling. Whichever."

Erin nods slowly. "I think we should do it."

They run through the dialogue with Jillian so she can at least participate with that, and they agree that she should just follow along as best as she can and see where the music takes her.

When the judges gather around their display, Abby counts to three and pushes play on the boombox.

Ambient noise starts.

"Good," Erin says.

"Morning," Abby says.

"Prepare," Jillian says.

"For takeoff into the unknown," they all say together, shaking as if they're spaceships. Then they start moving around like robots. "In 5…4…3…2…1."

The three of them line up one in front of the other and wave their arms.

"The universe is mysterious," Erin says.

"96% mysterious!" Abby echoes.

"But what 'bout the topic of ghosts?" Jillian says from behind Erin.

"They're real!" Erin and Abby shout.

"Time is running out," Erin says.

"It's never too late if you believe," Abby says.

"In what?" Jillian says.

"GHOSTS! They're real!"

They break out of formation and start circling around, and Jillian picks up their cue quickly. They transition into their alternating side sweeps while Jillian dances in the background.

"Para!"

"Normal!"

"Is!"

"Normal!"

"AND A VALID SCIENCE," the three of them shout.

The next section has a bit of interpretive dancing and swaying. Then they grab at the air.

"Reach for the truth," Abby says.

"Entities are everywhere," Erin says.

"And the truth is out there," Jillian says behind them.

Erin grins. That wasn't in the script, but it's a nice addition.

"Word," Abby and Erin say together.

Then the music changes to more of a hip-hop beat.

"Hey!"

"Hey!"

"Ho!"

"Ho!"

"Why are skeptics so fast to say no?"

"Yo," Erin says. "How many different ghosts we got, A?"

This is Abby's rap solo.

"Humanoids, vapours, several dozen more. Free-roaming, anchored, are you keeping score? Possessing, repeating, alone or in swarms. Powerful metaspectres changing forms!"

Then it's time for Abby's breakdancing, which usually goes for half an hour. Erin and Jillian dance behind her.

"She's getting physical," Erin says. " _Meta_ physical."

After a few minutes, she can see the judges getting impatient, so she mutters, "Let's skip ahead."

Abby gets up while Erin fast forwards through the tape. They start dancing again.

"Why don't I see ghosts flying around everywhere?"

"The barrier stops them," Jillian answers, copying their movements.

"It's the last line of defense in the portal betwixt the worlds of the living and the dead," Abby adds.

"We're right!" Erin says.

"Hit it," says Abby.

They launch into their finale.

"Protect the barrier…protect the barrier…PROTECT THE BARRIER," they say together, "or MANKIND WILL END!"

Abby lifts Erin for a few seconds, then sets her down for their final pose. Erin cocks her hip with her hand behind her head, Abby moves into a lunge of sorts, and Jillian folds her arms with her head tilted.

The entire gym is silent.

"Do you have any questions?" Abby asks, out of breath.

One of the judges clicks his pen. "I think we've got all we need, thank you."

They give the prize to Carl Lund and his robots, and they get to advance to the county finals.

Abby boos.

"Don't worry," Jillian says. "After school, we're going to tear his puny robot to shreds. Finals, shminals."

* * *

Jillian's a little nervous as she bikes home with Erin and Abby in the car behind her. She's not nervous about the robot fight, not one bit, but she _is_ nervous about Erin and Abby coming to her house, even if it's only to load the robot into Erin's car.

Mark must know that she's made friends, what with how many hours she spends out of the house nowadays, but he hasn't asked her about them. He's usually pretty good about respecting her privacy.

Jillian signals with her hand as she turns into her driveway, then dismounts and leaves her bike lying in the middle of it. Erin pulls up to the curb in front of the house and then the two of them get out of the car, slamming the doors shut behind them.

Erin shields her eyes from the sun as she appraises the house, and Jillian shifts uneasily.

"Come on," she says, "it's inside."

She opens the front door and steps inside.

"I'm home," she calls.

She hears the unmistakable sound of tiny feet running from down the hall and sees her little brother round the corner.

"Jilly!"

Luke runs straight into her open arms, and she lifts and swings him, then props him on her hip.

"Hey, lil dude," she says, kissing him on the top of his head.

He stretches his head to look behind her warily. He's not too great with new people.

"Those are my friends," she says. "That's Erin, and that's Abby."

They wave at him.

Mark rounds the corner and stops dead in surprise.

Jillian clears her throat. "Uh…hey. I, um…my friends are here to pick up something. Is that okay?"

He recovers a second later. "I…of course! Welcome!" He strides over with his hand outstretched. "I'm Mark."

Abby shakes his hand first. "Abby Yates."

"Nice to meet you, Abby. And…" He moves to shake Erin's hand.

"Erin," she says quickly. "Erin Gilbert."

He freezes, then he looks back at Jillian with mild horror. She swallows. He has a good memory, too.

He blinks, then looks back at Erin. "Nice to meet you too, Erin."

Jillian puts Luke down and he runs to hide behind the couch. "We just need to grab something from my room, and then we're heading out again."

"Okay," Mark says, still sounding a little baffled.

Jillian motions for Erin and Abby to follow her. When she pushes the door to her bedroom open, she's suddenly self-conscious, embarrassed by the mess and how it clearly looks (and smells) like a room that someone sat alone for months in.

If they notice, they don't comment on it.

"That's a lot of tapes," Abby says.

Jillian, bent in the closet moving boxes to try and find the one with the robot in it, doesn't turn. "I told you I'd probably seen all the X-Files episodes more than you."

"That's a lot of _magazines_ ," Erin says.

Jillian freezes. Looks over her shoulder to see Erin staring down at her desk, and her hefty stack of research materials.

"They were my mom's," she says quickly, because that's a good way to avoid other questions.

They fall silent.

She turns back to the boxes and finds the one she's looking for, then drags it out and sets it on top of her unmade bed. She hears a crunch as she puts it down, probably a forgotten chip crumbling. She eats a lot of chips in bed.

"Is that it?" Erin asks.

Jillian opens the box, checks to see that the robot is still in one piece, and smiles. "It is."

They load the box into the back of Erin's car with their science fair poster.

"Are you, um, coming with us?" Erin asks.

Jillian shakes her head and picks up her bike. "I'll meet you there."

Erin nods in understanding.

When Jillian pulls up to Hamilton Park, she sees a large crowd of kids from school gathered there already. Erin and Abby are waiting for her, leaning on the back of Erin's car and talking.

She drops her bike in the grass.

"You ready?" she asks.

"You're sure this thing still works?" Erin asks, nudging the box at her feet.

"Positive."

"Let's do it, then."

Jillian carries the box across the field to where the crowd is. Carl Lund is standing in the center of it all with his prized robot. Jillian rolls her eyes.

"Look who decided to show up?" he sneers.

"Chill out, Carl," Abby says.

"Shut up, Yates. This is between me and ET over there." He points at Jillian.

That's a new one.

"Don't worry, Carl, you're the only one who'll be phoning home…to cry to your parents," Erin says.

"You gotta get the voice right, Er," Jillian says. "Phone home!" Her ET impression is damn good, if she doesn't say so herself.

"Phone home," Erin tries. "Phone home."

"Better."

"Phone home," Abby says. Hers is even worse than Erin's.

"Phone home," Jillian repeats.

Carl snaps his fingers at them. "Will you losers cut it the hell out? It's time to put your money where your mouth is."

"Right, it's time to demolish your puny robot," Jillian says with a wide smile. She sets the box down and gently lifts out the Ghost Lizard. "Hello, old friend," she murmurs as she sets it down in the dirt.

" _That's_ your robot?" Carl laughs. "Where's its weapon?"

"That's for us to know and you to find out," Erin says.

Jillian takes out the remote controls and sits down on her heels, powering up the robot and trying a few commands. It moves perfectly.

And she's _pretty_ sure…like 87% sure…that the rockets and lasers will still work.

The other kids clear a circle around the two of them. Carl sits down cross-legged on his side, clutching his own controls with an evil grin.

Erin crouches beside her. "You need any help?"

"Just get the box out of the way," Jillian says, fully extending the antenna on the controls.

Erin obliges.

Someone has music playing from a boom box. David Bowie's _Let's Dance._ She bops her head to the beat. She much prefers 80s music to any of the current hits. Not that she listens to the radio any more.

Jillian pushes her glasses so they're resting on top of her head, and raises her eyebrow at Carl. "You ready?"

"Born ready, sweetheart," he says condescendingly.

She shrugs. "If ya say so, buttercup."

The circle of kids around them counts down. 3…2…1…

Blade Face surges forward. Jillian waits patiently.

"Jillian?" Erin says. "Are you gonna…"

Jillian hums along to the music. Blade Face is rapidly approaching. He's a speedy little fellow. While she despises its creator, it is a pretty nifty robot, and she can admire that.

When Blade Face gets about a foot away, Jillian hits the button that launches the rockets. It takes a second for them to ignite, but then they kick in and the Ghost Lizard is being carried up and out of harm's way. The ring of kids gasps collectively.

Carl looks stunned. "What the hell?"

Abby hoots behind Jillian. She steers the robot to the other end of the circle and lands it smoothly.

"Anyone have gum? I feel like I could use a stick of gum right now," Jillian says.

"Here," Erin says, and passes her a stick a few seconds later. Jillian unwraps it with one hand and tosses it in her mouth as she turns the Ghost Lizard so it's facing Blade Face again.

"That was a neat trick," Carl says, "but you can't do that forever. Come face me like a man."

Jillian blows a bubble and waits for it to pop before responding. "I'm no man, but if you insist…"

She moves the controls so the Ghost Lizard lurches forward. Admittedly, it doesn't move as smoothly as she would like, but it does the job. She makes sure to not get within reach of Blade Face's arm. As soon as it gets a hold on the Ghost Lizard, it's all over. It won't last one second against the saw blade.

That's why she needs to take it down first.

"If everyone could clear out of the way behind Blade Face," Jillian says calmly, snapping her gum, "that would be great."

Nobody moves.

"Well, have it your way. If you get hurt, this isn't on me."

She looks over her shoulder at Erin, who flashes her two thumbs up, then looks back into the circle. She moves her glasses back down over her eyes.

"Play tiiime," she sings, positioning the Ghost Lizard so it's in the optimal spot to cause the most damage. Then, under her breath, she mutters, "This one's for you, Mom."

She holds down the trigger for the lasers.

There's a flash and a beam of red light cuts through the air. Kids stumble out of the way of it. Jillian directs it down, down, until it connects with Blade Face.

It slices right through the robot like butter. There's a few seconds where the only sound is the music playing, and then two halves crash to the ground, smoking.

Jillian stops the laser and drops the controller in the ground, raising her fists over her head victoriously.

"Woo!"

Erin and Abby burst into cheers behind her.

Carl sits there, complete shock on his face. He throws his own controller on the ground and stands, balling his fists.

"What the _fuck_ was that?"

Jillian blows another bubble. "That, buddy, was me absolutely _demolishing_ your puny robot, exactly like I said I would."

"You _cheated_. There's no way _you_ built that."

Erin steps past her, her own hands clenched. "Just accept that she beat you fair and square."

Jillian stands as well and reaches for Erin to hold her back.

"Hey, Carl," she says dryly. "I've got the controls to a laser right here, so if I were you, I wouldn't step any closer."

He glares, and then delivers a very deliberate kick to the Ghost Lizard.

Erin breaks from Jillian's grasp and lunges at him, swinging and striking him in the face before he can even duck out of the way. Instantly, a few of his friends are there, pulling Erin off him and shoving her across the ring. Jillian catches her before she trips.

"Crazy bitch!" Carl shouts at her.

Mercifully, he takes that opportunity to leave before things escalate any more, and he takes his broken robot and most of the crowd with him. A few of the kids linger behind to congratulate Jillian on her victory, then it's just the three of them.

Jillian kneels to carefully transfer the robot back into its box. It doesn't seem to be damaged from his kick, nor from the fight. She kisses her fingers, then pats the robot's head.

"You did good, little buddy."

Abby has her head bent over Erin's hand, which is already turning purple across the knuckles.

"That was a sick punch," Jillian says casually as she stands with the box and shifts it onto her hip.

Erin still looks pissed. "He kicked the Ghost Lizard."

"It's no worse for wear. He's just jealous that he got beat by a buncha giiirls."

"I don't think it's broken," Abby says, releasing Erin's fingers. "Just bruised and battered."

Erin grumbles as they cross the park to the parking lot. They load the box back into Erin's car.

Jillian looks around for her bike, but it isn't where she left it. A heavy feeling sinks in her stomach.

"Uhhh…guys?"

They both look her way.

"You happen to see my bike anywhere?"

They glance around, but it's nowhere in sight. The parking lot is empty now.

"Son of a—" Abby shakes her head. "I think they stole it."

Jillian's mouth goes dry. They stole it?

She doesn't care about the cheap bike, she has no attachment to it, but how is she going to get _home?_

Erin must be able to read her mind, because she touches her arm. "It's too far to walk."

Jillian shoves her hands in her pockets. "No, I…I'll have to. It's not that far."

"It kinda is," Abby points out.

Jillian tries to force down the rising panic at the thought of getting into a car.

"I can't. I can't." She closes her eyes. _A crunch of metal_.

"Hey," Erin says, "breathe, Jillian. You're okay. You're safe."

Jillian opens her eyes and realizes she's gripping onto Erin's hands, even her injured one. When did that happen? She drops them apologetically. "I can't do it."

Erin bites her lip. "I know it's hard. But at some point…don't you think you need to face your fear?"

Jillian scuffs her boot on the pavement.

"What if I sit with you in the back seat?" Erin offers.

"Yeah, you shouldn't be driving with an injured hand anyway," Abby says.

Jillian looks deep into Erin's earnest eyes for a few moments. "Okay," she says quietly.

An encouraging smile flickers on Erin's face. "I'll be right beside you."

They get into the car. Jillian's throat feels tight as she fastens her seatbelt snug across her chest, making sure twice that it's in there securely. As Abby starts the car, her stomach churns.

Erin reaches and takes hold of her hand, lacing their fingers together and squeezing tightly.

"We'll be okay," she says. "Abby's probably the most careful driver I've ever seen."

As if to prove Erin's point, Abby takes three whole minutes to back out of the parking spot. Even though there's nobody else in the parking lot.

As they begin the drive to Jillian's house, she keeps a vigilant watch out the window for any possible dangers. She grips Erin's (uninjured) hand tightly the whole way, and she doesn't think she breathes fully until they pull in front of her house some time later.

She holds onto Erin's hand a few seconds longer than necessary, then releases it.

"See?" Erin says. "That wasn't so bad."

"No. No, it…wasn't so bad," Jillian admits.

"Are you, um…will you need a ride to school tomorrow?"

Jillian hesitates for a few seconds. She supposes she could ask Mark for a ride.

"Maybe," she says. She clears her throat. "Yes. If you don't mind."

Erin smiles. "Of course not."

Jillian nods slowly, then opens the car door and slides out. She bends down to look into the back seat. She doesn't really know what to say, so she just gives Erin a little salute.

"See ya tomorrow."

Erin looks a little wistful as she waves. Abby waves out the driver's seat window, too.

It's only when Jillian gets inside the house that she realizes she forgot to get the Ghost Lizard out of the trunk of the car.

 _Ehh,_ she thinks. She's had it for many years. Maybe it's about time that Erin gets to keep it for a while.

Mark is waiting for her in the living room. She was hoping maybe she could sneak all the way to her room without talking to him, but that's not going to happen.

"Jillian," he says, his voice troubled.

She perches on the arm of the couch. "Yeah?"

"Was that…" He frowns. "That Erin, was she the one…"

She knows what he's getting at.

"I knew her back in elementary school," she says. And then, because she's never really forgiven it, she says, "She's the one you thought I made up."

His face darkens like that's the exact answer he was afraid of. "I'm sorry," he says quietly. "We didn't know."

"If you had…" She kicks her heel against the couch. "Would you have let me stay in school?"

"Yes," he says. "Of course we would've."

Jillian sighs. There's no point in dwelling on what could've been.

"I'm glad you found her again," Mark says quickly.

She looks out the front window, where she sees Erin's car driving away, so slow you'd think Abby was eighty instead of eighteen.

"Me too," Jillian says simply.

* * *

Even though the three of them have never been very into the kinds of activities that their peers are, like going to parties, football games, or the like, they all decide that they want to attend prom. They don't have dates, of course not, but they're going to go anyway. As friends.

Erin and Abby go dress shopping together. Jillian doesn't come. She says she's going to find something to wear at the thrift store, where she buys all her clothes.

Erin doesn't quite understand that. Mark has lots of money—he's some sort of bigshot investor, from what Erin knows about him—and she knows that he's offered to buy Jillian new clothes many times. Erin thinks if there was ever a time to get something new, it would be for prom, but she doesn't say anything.

Their prom is scheduled for the second weekend in May. Erin gets ready at Abby's house, where they do each other's hair and makeup and get dressed. They're going to pick up Jillian from her house on their way.

Erin's dress is light purple, with spaghetti straps that cross in the back. Abby's is royal blue and has puffy sleeves.

"We look awesome," Erin says, fluffing her bangs in the mirror of Abby's small bathroom.

"Yeah, we d— _ooh_ ," Abby doubles over, clutching her stomach.

Erin turns to her in a flash, her hand hovering over her back. "Abby?"

"Fine," Abby grunts, still bent over. A sheen of sweat has broken out on her forehead.

"Are you?" She definitely doesn't _seem_ fine.

"I threw up earlier," Abby admits. Her face twists.

"The flu?"

"The flu doesn't hurt this much," Abby groans.

"I'm getting your mom," Erin says. She steps out into the hallway. "Dr. Yates!" she calls.

Abby's mom appears shortly after. "What's going on?"

"Abby's sick."

Dr. Yates steps past her into the bathroom. There's not enough room in there for the three of them, so Erin waits in the hallway. Dr. Yates murmurs something to Abby.

A few minutes later, they exit the bathroom. Abby still has her arms wrapped around her abdomen, and Dr. Yates has her hand on her shoulder.

"I'm sorry, Erin, but I have to take Abby to the hospital."

Erin balks. "The _hospital?_ " Her heart beats in her throat.

Dr. Yates nods.

"I'll come with you," Erin says instantly. She follows them down the hallway.

"No, Erin," Abby gets out, then gasps a little. When she composes herself, she adds, "You don't have to throw away your prom for me. Go. With Jillian. You guys can tell me all about it."

Erin shakes her head. "Not without you."

"Erin. Please? I _want_ you to go. If I can't, then I want you to. Kay? Don't argue with me."

There's no arguing with Abby once she's made up her mind about something.

"Are you sure?" Erin whispers.

"Yes. Now get outta here before I barf on you."

Erin hesitates, then grabs her purse and keys. She waits until Dr. Yates helps Abby into their car and they've driven off, then she gets in her own car.

She drives to Jillian's house, distracted thinking and worrying about Abby.

Mark answers the door when she rings the bell.

"Erin! Don't you look beautiful."

She smiles bashfully and enters the house. Over in the middle the recliner, Luke eyes her.

"Jillian's just in her room," Mark says, shutting the door behind her.

"Thanks." She walks down the hall, pausing in front of a framed photo on the wall of Jillian and her mother. Jillian looks even younger than she was when Erin first met her. Erin had almost forgotten what she looked like when she was a kid.

She raps on Jillian's closed door when she gets there. "It's me."

"Come in," Jillian calls.

Erin pushes open the door and enters, then stops dead. Jillian turns from where she's studying herself in her floor length mirror.

"Too much?" she asks.

Erin just gapes at her.

She's wearing a _suit_ , not a dress.

Erin doesn't know why that surprises her so much. Jillian's always been a tomboy, and Erin couldn't _actually_ picture her in a dress…but still, it's _prom_.

And Jillian's wearing a suit. A green suit. With a white button-up shirt. And a loud-printed tie. And her hair is down. It's never down.

She can't stop staring. Her mouth is dry all of a sudden, like she's dehydrated. Actually, she probably is.

Jillian's face falls. "What's wrong? Is it the tie that's too much? I have another one…"

"The tie is fine," Erin manages to whisper. Her voice sounds hoarse. She coughs, hoping to clear it.

Jillian sweeps her eyes up and down Erin's own outfit. "You look really pretty, by the way," she says, almost shyly.

Something in the very back of Erin's brain starts making a lot of noise, almost like an alarm. She can feel _that_ question, the one she was too afraid to ask Jillian, hovering back there, but she shoos it away. Now's not the time for that.

She still hasn't said a whole lot. Jillian is staring at her a little strangely.

"You okay, there? Where's Abby?"

That snaps Erin out of it. "Sick," she blurts.

"Huh?"

"Abby's sick. Her mom had to take her to the hospital."

Jillian's mouth falls open. "What? Is she okay?"

"I don't know," Erin says.

"Shit," Jillian says. "Should we bail on prom?"

"She gave me specific instructions to go anyway so we can tell her about it," Erin says, her voice almost robotic.

"Alright?"

Erin doesn't say anything.

"Um…" Jillian says. "You never did answer…is it too much?"

Erin shakes her head so fast she's surprised she doesn't get whiplash. "You look…very nice," she chokes out.

"Cool," Jillian says.

Out in the living room, Mark takes a few photos of them. He says he feels bad that Abby can't join them.

After that, they go out to Erin's car. Jillian gets in the back seat like she always does, except it's a little weird without Abby in the passenger's seat.

"Glad we didn't get a limo," Erin says, meeting Jillian's eyes in the rear-view mirror. "I'm basically a chauffeur."

Jillian chuckles. "Where's the partition to put up so you can't hear me?"

They get to the school and park.

"Shall we?" Jillian says, extending her elbow for Erin to grab onto.

Erin hesitates for only a second, then takes it and they head inside.

They get some dirty looks—a _lot_ of dirty looks, actually, most of them directed at Jillian—but they keep walking.

The gym has been completely transformed. It's all pretty cheesy, the decorations, but nice all the same. They stand awkwardly at the edge of the gym, watching everyone else dance.

Jillian is bobbing her head. "Come on, we came to dance, didn't we?" She grabs Erin's hand and tugs her out to the dance floor.

Erin's a little self-conscious of her dancing, but after a few songs, she's getting over it. Jillian is such a wild dancer that it's hard not to let loose when you're dancing with her.

She's having a lot of fun, but she wishes Abby wasn't sick. She hopes she's okay.

The song transitions into _I'll Be Missing You_.

Jillian freezes.

Then she runs.

Erin is a little dumbfounded for a few seconds, then she runs after her. The hallway is empty, but the door to the girls' bathroom is just closing. She jogs over and catches it.

"Jillian?" she calls.

There's a sniffle. The middle stall is closed. She can see Jillian's brown wing-tip shoes underneath. She knocks lightly on the stall.

"What's going on?"

Jillian unlocks the stall but doesn't open the door. Erin gently pushes it open to see Jillian sitting on the edge of the toilet seat with her head in her hands. She's clearly crying.

Erin steps inside the stall and shuts the door behind her.

"Jillian?" she repeats quietly.

She doesn't lift her head. "That song…it was playing…when…" Her voice breaks.

Erin crouches, which isn't easy in her dress, and wraps her fingers around Jillian's forearm. "It's okay. I'm so sorry. I didn't know."

She watches Jillian's throat bob as she swallows.

"We don't have to go back in," Erin says. "We can stay here."

"That's a lousy prom," Jillian says.

"I don't mind. Abby's in the hospital, so it's already not ideal."

Jillian takes a few deep breaths and drops her hands. Her face is red and wet with tears. "We don't need to stay in here all night. Just…maybe until the song is over?"

Erin nods. "Of course. Whatever you need."

They sit there silently. Jillian wipes her eyes with the sleeve of her green jacket.

"Where'd you get your suit?" Erin asks, just to make conversation.

"Mark helped me pick it out and get it tailored," Jillian says. "I wanted one from the thrift store, but he said if I was going to wear one then I had to do it right."

"That's nice of him," Erin says with a small smile.

"Yeah."

Sometimes Erin wonders what it must be like for Jillian to have the only surviving members of her family be people who she's barely related to. Mark's just her stepdad, and Luke is her half-brother. Her mom was supposed to be her only family, and now she's left with pieces of a family that she never really wanted, and it's missing the only person who mattered to her.

She'd never actually ask Jillian about it, because she feels like it's way too difficult of a subject.

A few minutes pass.

"We can probably go back, now," Jillian says.

They leave the stall and put some cold water on Jillian's face to take down the redness until it doesn't look like she's been crying.

They head back to the gym, where a new song is playing. They dance like nothing happened.

They take a break after a bit, get some punch, lean against the wall, and watch their peers dance.

"Who d'you think is losing their virginity tonight?" Jillian asks.

Erin snorts into her cup of punch. " _Jillian_."

"What? It's a fun game."

Erin blushes just thinking about it. "I'm not playing it."

"Fiiine."

They throw their cups in the garbage and rejoin the dance floor. They dance for a few more songs, then the song fades into a slower song. _From This Moment On_.

Erin pouts. Not another slow song. She goes to walk away, assuming Jillian will follow her, but instead she catches her wrist. Erin looks back at her with confusion.

"Come on," Jillian says with a lopsided smile. "We can dance to this."

Erin hesitates for much longer than she did before they walked into the building. What will people think? Especially with Jillian dressed the way she is?

Erin bites her lip. Jillian's eyes are calm and eager, like this doesn't mean anything, but behind them there's something that almost looks like fear.

Erin steps closer. She pauses, taking a quick peek around her to copy what everyone else is doing. She's never slow-danced with anyone before.

She carefully drapes her arms over Jillian's shoulders. Jillian beams and takes her waist, equally as careful.

 _"_ _Right beside you is where I belong, from this moment on._ "

They sway a little awkwardly. Erin's heart is beating really fast, probably because she's scared that someone might say something. What if people think that they're…you know?

" _You and I will never be apart."_

They continue to sway. Erin is distracted watching over Jillian's shoulder. She can see a few of the parent chaperones gathering on the other side of the gym, watching them and whispering.

" _There is nothing I wouldn't give, from this moment on."_

The principal has joined the parent chaperones. They're still watching. Now they're walking. Towards them.

"Jillian," Erin says urgently.

Jillian cocks her head. "What?"

" _All we need is just the two of us."_

Erin releases her arms and steps out of Jillian's grasp as the principal reaches them with a few parents flanking him.

"Miss Gilbert, Miss Holtzmann…" the principal says. "We're going to have to ask you to stop that."

"We're not allowed to dance?" Jillian says.

"It's inappropriate," one of the parents says.

Jillian gestures around them. "Everyone else is dancing like this."

Erin can feel her face getting hot. Everyone is looking their way now.

The principal has a pinched look on his face. "There are rules of conduct, Miss Holtzmann, and if you aren't willing to follow them, then we'll have to escort you out of prom. You don't want that, do you?"

Jillian crosses her arms. "You know what, I'll make it easy for you. I'll leave."

Then she storms off.

The principal and the parents look at Erin as if daring her to make her choice.

She follows Jillian.

* * *

Jillian is fuming as she bursts out of the doors of the school and into the night air. They have some nerve. _Inappropriate?_ Rules of conduct? It's all a bunch of bullshit. All they were doing was _dancing_. It didn't _mean_ anything.

Her throat tightens.

She hears the doors slam open behind her but doesn't stop.

"Jillian!"

She stops.

She turns.

"Erin?" She frowns. "Don't…what are you doing?"

Erin rolls her eyes. "Come on, as if I'd want to stay there without you."

Jillian's hands hang stiffly at her sides. "Oh."

She starts walking again. Erin follows.

"Principal Davis is an asshole," Erin says as they walk. They're not heading in the direction of the parking lot. "We didn't do anything…wrong."

What does _that_ mean?

Jillian doesn't say anything. They keep walking. They reach the field and don't stop.

Erin shivers beside her. Jillian eyes her, then shrugs off her jacket and holds it to Erin wordlessly.

Erin takes it after a pause. "Thank you."

They walk as far as they can until they're at the corner where the fences meet. Their Spot. They'll always keep coming back to the nearly-invisible places where all the lines intersect.

Jillian sits down on the grass. Erin joins her.

"We're going to get eaten by a bear," Jillian says sullenly.

Erin laughs quietly. "There's no bears."

Jillian rips up a handful of grass and lets it drop again.

"Jillian," Erin says softly, "if there's anything you…want to tell me…you can, okay? You don't have to be scared to."

Jillian rips up another handful of grass. She stares up at the moon. Closes her eyes.

"I think I'm gay, Erin."

She hears Erin suck in air. There are crickets chirping somewhere.

Something heavy leans on her shoulder, and she opens her eyes. Erin's resting her head there. Warm. Solid.

"It's okay," Erin whispers.

Jillian exhales. "Really?" she whispers back.

Erin nods her head. Jillian feels it moving against her neck.

"Did you know?" Jillian says.

"I wondered."

"Since when?"

"Since Carl called you that name."

"Oh." Just since then. Not since they shared a kiss in the woods under the moon on a night just like this.

"Does Mark know? Did…"

She answers the unspoken question, too. "Nobody. You're the first."

"Oh." Erin snuggles even closer so their arms and knees are touching. "I'm proud of you for telling me."

"You don't hate me? You're not weirded out? You don't have to be my roommate next year if it's going to make you uncomfortable."

"How could I ever hate you, Jillian?" Erin pulls her head off her shoulder and twists so she's facing her. "And…well, you've always weirded me out. You're weird. Remember?"

Jillian smiles a little. "I am."

Erin smiles back, face softened by the moonlight. Jillian studies her.

So beautiful. So, so beautiful.

Impulsively, she leans in. Brushes her lips ever so softly against Erin's.

Then she pulls back, hard.

"Shit," she says. "Shit. I'm sorry. Why did I do that?" She shakes her head rapidly. "Shit. I'm—"

Erin reaches her hand to touch Jillian's bicep. "Jillian, Jillian, stop."

Jillian holds her breath.

"It's okay," Erin says.

It is?

Jillian blinks.

"You can do it again," Erin whispers.

It takes Jillian a few seconds, but then she leans in again. This time her lips press firmer against Erin's, and Erin kisses her back, her hand coming up to cradle the back of Jillian's neck.

It's clear they both still don't know what they're doing, but she doesn't mind. That just means that neither one of them has been kissing anyone else since.

After a long kiss, they pull back apart. Erin's hand is still on her neck.

Something stirs in Jillian's stomach. What does this mean?

Erin breathes out. "We can't…uh. We shouldn't be doing this."

Jillian flinches back a bit. "I thought you said there was nothing wrong about this?"

"I don't think…that there is," Erin says quietly. "Other people do." She doesn't meet Jillian's eyes. Her voice shakes. "We don't need another reason for people to hate us."

"So…so what, then? We pretend like this didn't happen?" Jillian swallows. Can she do that?

Erin looks like she might cry. "Or…or we don't tell anybody."

"But…keep doing this?"

Erin pauses, then nods.

Jillian doesn't want to hide any part of herself. She's not ashamed. She never has been.

But she looks at Erin, beautiful Erin, and she nods, too. "Okay."

"Even Abby," Erin says.

Jillian is surprised. Abby's their best friend.

"Shoot," Erin says. "Abby. I forgot about Abby. I hope she's okay."

"We could go find out," Jillian says, "since we've already bailed on prom."

"Yeah," Erin says. "Yeah, we should do that."

They walk back to Erin's car and drive first to Abby's house, where her dad says that she's still at the hospital with appendicitis. They drive there next, and find Dr. Yates in the waiting room.

She blinks at them. "Girls! What are you doing here?"

"We came to see if Abby's okay," Erin says.

"She's in surgery," Dr. Yates says. "They're removing her appendix."

"Poor Abby," Jillian says.

"She'll be sad that you girls aren't at prom," Dr. Yates says.

They look at each other and shrug.

"It was okay," Erin says.

When Jillian gets home hours later, she finds Mark waiting up for her.

"How was it?" he asks, keeping his voice down so he doesn't wake Luke.

She shrugs. "Mediocre."

She's about to go to bed, to get out of this suit and go and contemplate everything, but she stops herself.

"Hey, Mark?"

"Yeah, kiddo?"

"There's something I want to tell you."

He nods, encouraging her to continue.

"I'm gay," she says, "and I don't care if you don't approve of that. It's who I am, and my mom always told me that the most important thing in life is being proud of who you are, and I am. Proud of myself. So if you're not, I don't really care, and—"

"Jillian," he says, holding up a hand. "I agree with your mom. Being yourself is the most important thing, and I'm so proud of you that you're so unapologetically yourself. Your mom would've been so proud of you, too. I love you, kiddo, and nothing will change that. Not this, not anything."

She stares for a few seconds, then throws her arm around him in the tightest hug she's ever given him in all the years that they've known each other.

"Thank you," she murmurs against his chest.

* * *

Abby makes a full recovery. They tell her vague details about prom, like the decorations. They don't say anything about being kicked out, or about their kiss on the field.

The school year winds down in a blur of studying. They're all trying to pull off 4.0 GPAs.

They take all their exams, and before they know it, they're graduating.

Erin never thought that she'd be graduating with two friends, two _best_ friends at her side, but here she is. She crosses the stage to polite applause. Abby crosses to her mom and dad cheering extra loud. Jillian crosses to Mark hollering loudly, and Erin sees the tears in her eyes and knows that she wishes her mom was here.

After the ceremony, Erin's parents shake her hand, then leave for home. Abby's parents and Mark envelope her in large hugs to compensate, and take a million photos of the three of them in their caps and gowns.

It's a bittersweet day, but mostly sweet.

Erin finally gets to move on. In a few short months, the three of them will be in Ann Arbor together, far from their parents, far from all the kids who have made their lives miserable. They can start fresh.

She can't wait.


End file.
